Just as the feud with Marc Marquez was patched up, Valentino Rossi kicked off a new spat with Jorge Lorenzo in the last MotoGP round at Misano. But did Lorenzo have any grounds for complaint, and is Rossi just trying to get under his skin?
Valentino Rossi is no saint. Just ask Max Biaggi, Sete Gibernau, Marc Marquez, or even his current team-mate at Yamaha Jorge Lorenzo. Behind the happy-go-lucky demeanour that makes Rossi so popular, there is the mean streak every top sportsman needs to gain the edge at the very pinnacle.
But where is the line, and how often has he crossed it? All four of the rivals named above have called the MotoGP legend out for going too far in the past, with Lorenzo the most recent to do so following the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano.
Rossi's wars with Biaggi escalated to the point of scraps breaking out behind the podium, the short period where Gibernau was too big a thorn in his side effectively ended with their clash at the final corner at Jerez in 2005, while the Marquez feud arguably cost Rossi the '15 world championship.
But not long after that nasty row was patched up earlier this year, Rossi's civil war with Lorenzo, which has always been a slower burn than his other high-profile rivalries, ignited post-race in Italy. The trouble for Lorenzo was he didn't have much of a point.
Rossi is capable of stepping over the line; his deliberate collision with Marquez that sent the Honda rider to the floor in Malaysia last year is concrete proof of that, and he was capable of pushing the limits when Biaggi or Gibernau (pictured below) got under his skin in his earlier days.
But his battles with Marquez this year, most notably at Barcelona and Silverstone, show that both riders are capable of moving past their differences and they have got back to letting their ability do the talking on track in head-to-head battles.
The edge created by their feud did make you hold your breath that little bit tighter when they were together on track in the early part of the year, but even with that relationship now repaired they are still breathtaking to watch in combat.
Both seem happy to give as good as they get without things turning nasty now the fuss of Sepang 2015 is in the past. Watching them fighting for the same piece of asphalt is just as thrilling now as it was when you felt they were enemies.
Two greats going at it, with neither going too far nor feeling the need to whine about their opponent's actions afterwards, makes for great sporting drama. Maybe Rossi's more recent dices with Marquez (which he referenced while arguing with Lorenzo), and the fact he seemed to have no problem with Dani Pedrosa's pass for the win at Misano, have in fact strengthened his hand in the latest spat with his team-mate.
MotoGP heads back to Aragon this weekend, the scene of several laps of rough-and-tumble between Pedrosa and Rossi last year, another battle the Honda rider won. While Rossi didn't take kindly to Marquez's robust tactics towards the end of last season, he simply hailed the Pedrosa fight as "a great battle", maybe not feeling the need to fall out with the nice guy on the other side of the Honda garage.
Whether or not Rossi got involved in the row at Misano simply to wind Lorenzo up, at least his position is consistent: he had no problem with Marquez's aggressive riding at Silverstone, and he was satisfied that Pedrosa's surprise pass at Misano's Turn 4 fell into the hard-but-fair category.
That left very few chinks in the armour for Lorenzo to attack when complaining about a move that was very similar to some Rossi has been on the receiving end of recently.
And while it's true that Lorenzo didn't bring up his problem with Rossi's racecraft unprompted, the fact he used the question about it as a launching-off point for what became a heated exchange with his team-mate showed he was more than a little aggrieved.
If he wasn't interested in fanning the flames, he didn't have to expand on it. What followed between both riders wasn't even prompted by follow-up questions from journalists trying to nudge the team-mates into an argument. Lorenzo and Rossi took care of that all by themselves.
But who knows how much further Lorenzo would have taken things had Rossi not laughed while sitting there listening to the criticism from his team-mate. It was a little childish from Rossi, but it was only once Lorenzo moved on from talking about the Misano pass itself, and strayed into making a more general point about "it's his style - other riders overtake more clean..." that Rossi interjected.
Had Lorenzo left it at "my opinion is the overtake was maybe too aggressive" we probably wouldn't have had the resulting war of words. What could have been merely a difference of opinion over one relatively clean move became far more confrontational.
Was Rossi the villain here? On track, certainly not. Off track, aside from the fact some would view laughing while a fellow competitor is talking as disrespectful, Rossi didn't really cross the line. And, once Lorenzo was committed to his point of view, neither did he.
In the modern sporting world of media-trained stars declining to share their honest opinions, this exchange – between team-mates no less – was a breath of fresh air.
Rossi wasn't the instigator, and he only jumped in once Lorenzo had picked the fight in the first place.
Lorenzo's only fault in this mini-saga was the fact he was wrong in his view of the overtake. Rossi's move was clean – if a little on the edge. Rossi has put worse moves on other people and has been on the receiving end of just as much, and perhaps it was his wealth of experience in that particular department that gave him the confidence to go on the attack when Lorenzo tried to take a verbal swing at him. The mud being thrown was unlikely to stick this time.
Looking at it from the point of view of a ruthless sportsman, perhaps Rossi saw a chance to get under Lorenzo's skin just as the world champion appears to be dragging himself out of a forgettable mid-season spell that ruined his chances of riding off into the sunset with another world title to his name when he swaps Yamaha for Ducati at the end of the year.
In that respect, the fact Rossi came out on top in their fight (even if both lost to Pedrosa) and he was on home soil, having spent the weekend being adored by even more fans than usual, maybe fired him up to get involved in a bit of harmless back-and-forth after the race.
On the subject of the partisan Italian crowd, Lorenzo's complaints about Rossi overshadowed a masterclass from the former in dealing with the jeers from the crowd when he headed out onto the podium. Lorenzo seemed to revel in the role of pantomime villain, dealing with it expertly, soaking up the boos and almost taunting the Italian fans to try harder as all their noise achieved was making him smile.
Talking of villains, that brings us back to the start. Is Valentino Rossi capable of playing the villain when he feels it's required? Absolutely – history has shown us that on more than one occasion.
Was he in the wrong last time out with Lorenzo? Absolutely not.
We're yet to see Rossi the villain in 2016, but if Rossi the hero is prepared to race hard and to take it when others dish it out, that will do nicely.
Just as the feud with Marc Marquez was patched up, Valentino Rossi kicked off a new spat with Jorge Lorenzo in the last MotoGP round at Misano. But did Lorenzo have any grounds for complaint, and is Rossi just trying to get under his skin?
Valentino Rossi is no saint. Just ask Max Biaggi, Sete Gibernau, Marc Marquez, or even his current team-mate at Yamaha Jorge Lorenzo. Behind the happy-go-lucky demeanour that makes Rossi so popular, there is the mean streak every top sportsman needs to gain the edge at the very pinnacle.
But where is the line, and how often has he crossed it? All four of the rivals named above have called the MotoGP legend out for going too far in the past, with Lorenzo the most recent to do so following the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano.
Rossi's wars with Biaggi escalated to the point of scraps breaking out behind the podium, the short period where Gibernau was too big a thorn in his side effectively ended with their clash at the final corner at Jerez in 2005, while the Marquez feud arguably cost Rossi the '15 world championship.
But not long after that nasty row was patched up earlier this year, Rossi's civil war with Lorenzo, which has always been a slower burn than his other high-profile rivalries, ignited post-race in Italy. The trouble for Lorenzo was he didn't have much of a point.
Rossi is capable of stepping over the line; his deliberate collision with Marquez that sent the Honda rider to the floor in Malaysia last year is concrete proof of that, and he was capable of pushing the limits when Biaggi or Gibernau (pictured below) got under his skin in his earlier days.
But his battles with Marquez this year, most notably at Barcelona and Silverstone, show that both riders are capable of moving past their differences and they have got back to letting their ability do the talking on track in head-to-head battles.
The edge created by their feud did make you hold your breath that little bit tighter when they were together on track in the early part of the year, but even with that relationship now repaired they are still breathtaking to watch in combat.
Both seem happy to give as good as they get without things turning nasty now the fuss of Sepang 2015 is in the past. Watching them fighting for the same piece of asphalt is just as thrilling now as it was when you felt they were enemies.
Two greats going at it, with neither going too far nor feeling the need to whine about their opponent's actions afterwards, makes for great sporting drama. Maybe Rossi's more recent dices with Marquez (which he referenced while arguing with Lorenzo), and the fact he seemed to have no problem with Dani Pedrosa's pass for the win at Misano, have in fact strengthened his hand in the latest spat with his team-mate.
MotoGP heads back to Aragon this weekend, the scene of several laps of rough-and-tumble between Pedrosa and Rossi last year, another battle the Honda rider won. While Rossi didn't take kindly to Marquez's robust tactics towards the end of last season, he simply hailed the Pedrosa fight as "a great battle", maybe not feeling the need to fall out with the nice guy on the other side of the Honda garage.
Whether or not Rossi got involved in the row at Misano simply to wind Lorenzo up, at least his position is consistent: he had no problem with Marquez's aggressive riding at Silverstone, and he was satisfied that Pedrosa's surprise pass at Misano's Turn 4 fell into the hard-but-fair category.
That left very few chinks in the armour for Lorenzo to attack when complaining about a move that was very similar to some Rossi has been on the receiving end of recently.
And while it's true that Lorenzo didn't bring up his problem with Rossi's racecraft unprompted, the fact he used the question about it as a launching-off point for what became a heated exchange with his team-mate showed he was more than a little aggrieved.
If he wasn't interested in fanning the flames, he didn't have to expand on it. What followed between both riders wasn't even prompted by follow-up questions from journalists trying to nudge the team-mates into an argument. Lorenzo and Rossi took care of that all by themselves.
But who knows how much further Lorenzo would have taken things had Rossi not laughed while sitting there listening to the criticism from his team-mate. It was a little childish from Rossi, but it was only once Lorenzo moved on from talking about the Misano pass itself, and strayed into making a more general point about "it's his style - other riders overtake more clean..." that Rossi interjected.
Had Lorenzo left it at "my opinion is the overtake was maybe too aggressive" we probably wouldn't have had the resulting war of words. What could have been merely a difference of opinion over one relatively clean move became far more confrontational.
Was Rossi the villain here? On track, certainly not. Off track, aside from the fact some would view laughing while a fellow competitor is talking as disrespectful, Rossi didn't really cross the line. And, once Lorenzo was committed to his point of view, neither did he.
In the modern sporting world of media-trained stars declining to share their honest opinions, this exchange – between team-mates no less – was a breath of fresh air.
Rossi wasn't the instigator, and he only jumped in once Lorenzo had picked the fight in the first place.
Lorenzo's only fault in this mini-saga was the fact he was wrong in his view of the overtake. Rossi's move was clean – if a little on the edge. Rossi has put worse moves on other people and has been on the receiving end of just as much, and perhaps it was his wealth of experience in that particular department that gave him the confidence to go on the attack when Lorenzo tried to take a verbal swing at him. The mud being thrown was unlikely to stick this time.
Looking at it from the point of view of a ruthless sportsman, perhaps Rossi saw a chance to get under Lorenzo's skin just as the world champion appears to be dragging himself out of a forgettable mid-season spell that ruined his chances of riding off into the sunset with another world title to his name when he swaps Yamaha for Ducati at the end of the year.
In that respect, the fact Rossi came out on top in their fight (even if both lost to Pedrosa) and he was on home soil, having spent the weekend being adored by even more fans than usual, maybe fired him up to get involved in a bit of harmless back-and-forth after the race.
On the subject of the partisan Italian crowd, Lorenzo's complaints about Rossi overshadowed a masterclass from the former in dealing with the jeers from the crowd when he headed out onto the podium. Lorenzo seemed to revel in the role of pantomime villain, dealing with it expertly, soaking up the boos and almost taunting the Italian fans to try harder as all their noise achieved was making him smile.
Talking of villains, that brings us back to the start. Is Valentino Rossi capable of playing the villain when he feels it's required? Absolutely – history has shown us that on more than one occasion.
Was he in the wrong last time out with Lorenzo? Absolutely not.
We're yet to see Rossi the villain in 2016, but if Rossi the hero is prepared to race hard and to take it when others dish it out, that will do nicely.