I'm curious to know if Rossi's desire to race cars in the future,
and his previous test drives of the Ferrari F1 car, have anything
to do with this sponsorship.
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I dare say Rossi's relationship with Ferrari helped (Montezemolo was Ferrari CEO when Rossi tested and is now Fiat CEO who owns a stake in Ferrari) but I doubt we'll see Rossi racing F1, he's getting a little old and it's going to be really hard to break into the sport now. WRC seems to be where it's at for him, Fiat doesn't have a team however. My guess is that Yamaha and Ferrari had to get pretty chummy to get Rossi in the F1 car and the relationship worked so they went looking for other ways to do business.