Jerry Burgess worried for Valentino Rossi’s rivals

Valentino Rossi’s crew chief Jerry Burgess believes the switch to a single make tyre rule for 2009 could have potentially dire consequences for the world title aspirations of Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa.

The Aussie reckons it will be even harder to defeat the Italian in the future now that the entire premier class field will all run on Bridgestone rubber.

“If I was a rider out there now I wouldn’t want to be on the same stuff as Valentino Rossi. That’s a tough call, “said Burgess, who believes Rossi will still be dominant and that MotoGP will not be significantly improved as a spectacle.

He added: “It was virtually a mono tyre several years ago without a regulation with Michelin in 500s and we saw some pretty uninteresting racing there with Mick (Doohan) clearing away and winning races. When it was Mick and Valentino in the past with everyone on the same brand, those guys did most of the winning, so nothing will change.”

And Burgess still believes that moving to a single-tyre rule is bad for the premier class world championship.

He said: “To me its taking away the reason we go prototype racing, which is to improve bikes and technical partners and the engineering challenge which can make motorcycles better and safer in the future. It’s a disappointing decision given we are in prototype racing and we need a many technical contributors, so we can to differentiate ourselves from the World Superbike category.”