The amount of car racing that the MotoGP legend intends to pack into this season indicates how seriously he’s taking the business of honing his new craft
GARY WATKINS
Is Valentino Rossi getting serious about this four-wheel-racing lark? On the face of it, the answer has to be yes. The motorcycle legend will not just be racing in the World Endurance Championship with the WRT BMW squad in the new LMGT3 class this year. He’s doubling up with the Belgian team in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, and has thrown in a smattering of other races, too. Right now he’s scheduled to do 16 in what will be only his third full season of car racing.
It should be expected that a competitor who won seven world titles in MotoGP and a couple more in its feeder categories wants to perform at the highest level in his second career, to be able to match the quickest drivers around him. He admits that doing more racing is part of a plan to achieve that, though he has also stressed that it was important for him to keep a foot in both camps. There’s his love of the Spa 24 Hours, the centrepiece round of the GTWCE, to consider.
Racing at the Le Mans 24 Hours was one of the first topics of discussion when WRT boss Vincent Vosse first discussed with Rossi what they might do together. Ticking that box explains the WEC programme in one of the Belgian team’s BMW M4 GT3s together with Maxime Martin and Ahmad Al Harthy. The plan for him to race in WEC was already in place when he piped up and said he wanted to do the GTWCE enduros as well.
But then he realised he wouldn’t be racing at his home circuit of Misano, the track on which he scored his maiden GTWCE win last year. That’s why the Italian fixture, part of the Sprint Cup leg of the series, was added to his schedule. And what about Brands Hatch, a venue he enjoyed immensely on his two outings in 2022 and 2023? That one was chucked in, too.
The sheer amount of racing Rossi will be doing in 2023 is significant for a driver who is still fresh to cars after calling time on his MotoGP career at the end of 2021. Seat time is everything in motor racing, nowhere more so than in the GT3 arena. The professional drivers whom he aspires to emulate almost live in the machinery in which they earn their crust.
Rossi is clearly still learning. He has to be so soon after making the swap to cars, notwithstanding the thousands of miles of testing he did in Ferrari Formula 1 cars in the 2000s, and that much was clear last year. He clearly made a step for
