Autosport:
Valentino Rossi has had to abandon his plan to make a one-off appearance in the Superbike World Championship after Yamaha decided they would be unable to prepare a competitive bike for him in time.
The MotoGP champion said late last year that he wanted to take on recently retired WSBK champion Troy Bayliss, who Rossi hoped would be tempted to return to the series to race against him.
Although Rossi's Yamaha team were supportive of the plan, they have now concluded that they did not have sufficient parts to provide a bike for the Italian.
"Unfortunately this wasn't possible because Yamaha is working on the new R1 motorbike, and there are not many spare parts available yet," said Yamaha team boss Davide Brivio.
Hmmm... They couldn't spare even one WSBK-spec R1 for the top rider on Earth? These aren't GP prototypes... if the Yamaha SBK team is that low on spare parts lets hope Ben Spies doesn't crash for this entire season...
More likely Yamaha and perhaps MotoGP itself have too much of an investment in Rossi and can't risk seeing him injured. It's no secret that the racing in superbikes has been a lot closer and wilder than MotoGP for a couple years now...
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