Valentino Rossi confirmed on Thursday that he would ride in the MotoGP™ World Championship for at least two more years.

Speaking to the press ahead of the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France at Le Mans, the nine-time World Champion refuted rumours that had surfaced about his possible retirement at the end of the current season.

Rossi stated his desire to ride on for at least two further years in the Championship as he made it abundantly clear that retirement was not on his radar.

“For me it's very difficult to understand where the news starts because I never speak about my retirement, and I want to race in MotoGP for the next two years for sure,” said the Italian.

Rossi also confirmed that he would be at Mugello in the aftermath of the Le Mans weekend, in order to make up for the cancelled day of testing at Estoril which was lost to poor weather.

“For us it was important, because we had some new stuff to try,” said Rossi. “For this race here it [the set-up] will be the same [as in Portugal] and next week we will go to Mugello for some testing, where we can try some new parts so we can increase our speed.”

Looking ahead to this weekend's fourth round, for which the practice sessions commence on Friday morning, Rossi continued: “I like the track, it's good, it's difficult and you always have to fight with the weather! But we come here from having not such a bad weekend in Portugal, and we will continue in that way and try to improve our performance to get closer to the guys in front of us.

“Last year was our best result with the Ducati here, so we will see. We are optimistic and we will try to improve our performance.”