Photo: Yamaha Racing

Much of the talk about Valentino Rossi and his injuries have centered on the Italian’s leg, which was broken with a compound fracture at Mugello earlier this year. Despite causing Rossi to miss several races, the Italian’s biggest physical concern hasn’t been his leg, but instead his shoulder, which he injured in April while motocross training. The shoulder has been a lingering issue for Rossi ever since his return at Brno, which culminated this weekend with the Fiat-Yamaha team actually having to setup the M1 at Aragon to work around the injury.

With a lackluster performance this weekend, not to mention a disappointing return to GP racing in general, Rossi announced after Sunday’s race that he was considering having his shoulder operated on after the three fly-away races (Motegi, Sepang, and Phillip Island), which would effectively mean that the nine-time World Champion would miss MotoGP’s last two stops at Estoril and Valencia. MotoMatters has once again done a superb job of transcribing Rossi’s interaction with the media on the subject, which adds some context to this development (read the transcript here)

This announcement is a big bombshell for the Yamaha camp, which could see its star rider, if we can still say that, again vacating from the team to heal his injuries. However again reading between the lines of the Italian, Rossi’s revelation this weekend has about as much to do with an injured shoulder as it does with putting pressure on Yamaha to release him from his contract in time to test the Ducati Desmosedici GP11 at Valencia.

Talking after the Indianapolis GP, Valentino Rossi explained that he is waiting to hear from Jeremy Burgess as to whether the Australian Crew Chief will retire next season. Assured of the fact that Burgess would not stay behind at Yamaha, and would not work with another rider, Rossi stated the buzz around whether Burgess would move with the Italian to Ducati, hinges as to when Burgess plans on retiring from motorcycle racing.

Another one of the worst-kept secrets in the MotoGP paddock is the graduation of Ben Spies from the Monster Tech3 Yamaha team to the factory Yamaha squad. With Valentino Rossi now officially out of the Yamaha picture, Spies’ opening in the factory squad is finally vacant.

With Spies testing the 2011 Yamaha YZR-M1 at Brno two weeks ago, more fuel was added to the fire that an announcement from the Texan was imminent. Dodging an official statements during Thursday’s pre-race conference at Indianapolis GP, Spies still all but confirmed where he would be for next season.

Now that Valentino Rossi has made his move to Ducati official, the only thing left to speculate upon is who will decide to join him at Ducati Corse. Most of this speculation surrounds Rossi’s Crew Chief, Jeremy Burgess, who many consider to be the man behind the man. However other familiar faces at Fiat-Yamaha could be jumping ship as well, namely Davide Brivio.

Brivio is Rossi’s Team Manager at Fiat-Yamaha (with the wall in the Fiat-Yamaha garage, Lorenzo has his own Team Manager, Wilco Zeelenberg), and if the Italian leaves Fiat-Yamaha along with Jeremy Burgess, the team will see a decisive blow in its talent pool.

The news is a bit obvious, but Lin Jarvis, the Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Racing, has confirmed that the factory MotoGP squad intends to retain the services of Jorge Lorenzo, and bring Ben Spies into the squad for the 2011 season.

The news comes on the heels of Valentino Rossi’s decision to move to Ducati for next season, and has been assumed to be a done deal once Rossi’s announcement was made public. This is however the first time that anyone at Yamaha has spoken about the team structure for next year in such a direct tone, likely because of the need to keep Rossi’s departure under wraps.