Exclusive: Inside Valentino Rossi’s chase for his long-awaited tenth world title

Valentino Rossi will begin the 2025 World Endurance Championship with WRT as a factory BMW driver in the LMGT3 class just a few days after his milestone 46th birthday. This year also marks a decade since he last came close to winning a world title, when he narrowly missed the 2015 MotoGP crown to Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo.

This year also marks Rossi’s fourth as a full-time car racer, having swapped two wheels for four when he retired from MotoGP at the end of 2021. He teamed up with the Vincent Vosse-helmed WRT squad for his first campaign in GT Racing.

A handful of top top six results in the GT World Challenge Europe’s Endurance and Sprint Cups in an Audi R8 marked a solid start to life for Rossi in 2022. A switch to BMW machinery for WRT in 2023 saw Rossi break his podium duck with a second at the season-opening Brands Hatch Sprint Cup round.

Then at his beloved home track of Misano, where his VR46 Academy trains constantly and he won in MotoGP three times, he took to the top step of the podium alongside Le Mans-winning co-driver Maxime Martin. The pair won again at Misano last year.

In 2024, Rossi returned to world championship competition in the WEC - as an FIA silver grade driver, downgraded from gold to satisfy status rules in the series - with WRT in the new LMGT3 class for GT cars.

Partnered with Martin and Ahmad Al Harthy, the trio piloted their #46 BMW M4 GT3 to a fourth in the Qatar opener, before getting to second in a WRT 1-2 at the following Imola round that was impacted by wet weather. Back-to-back DNFs followed at Spa and Le Mans, while further issues would deny good results at COTA and Bahrain. A second podium for the year came at Fuji when the #46 car finished third. Rossi ended the campaign sixth in the standings.

“First of all, Vale was racing in GT World Challenge, racing in the pro category, and won races in the pro category in Misano,” WRT boss Vosse tells Crash.net in an exclusive interview. And being on the podium in some of the races, fighting in the pro category, which I would say was already quite exceptional. In WEC he is doing a tremendous job, as a silver of course, because he is starting his fourth season.

“I mean, last year in WEC it was a bit difficult - nothing to do with Vale - in general in LMGT3. We had a difficult season. We only won Imola first and second due to a special condition. But Vale is a drive who is, I think, as a sportsman he is one of those guys that whatever he does he does it in a proper way, with a proper mindset. And Vale doesn’t do a race just to enjoy and have fun around the track.

“He is doing it to be competitive and this is what keeps him on fire. It’s those moments where he sees that he is competitive. I think the joy he has when he is winning a race is not the joy of winning a race: it’s the joy of being as competitive as his colleagues. For someone who is reaching now very soon his 46th birthday, it’s something who is… I think when some other sportsmen decide to do something, they decide to do it the right way and not halfway, not just to enjoy, not just to do something different. But to do it and be competitive, and this where you see the great champions. And he a great champion he is.”

Rossi has nothing left to prove in a career that has seen him transcend to motorsport legend. But doing things by half has never been his style. Even his tests in Ferrari Formula 1 machinery in the mid-2000s were done with an eye on a potential switch to the series.

Last year, Rossi carried out a dual campaign in WEC and GT World Challenge Europe. Now a father of two and keen to have more presence in MotoGP again in 2025, Rossi faced a dilemma over the winter about what to do this year. Earlier this week WRT announced that he would be focusing on WEC.

Vosse says the decision to go with WEC over GTWCE came as “we decided it would be a very good platform for him”. Vosse also confirmed to Crash that discussions are being had with Rossi about potentially competing in some of the GT endurance events the Italian is still fond of outside of WEC. A decision on this is expected in the coming weeks.

WRT has shaken up the line-up of its #46 car in WEC’s LMGT3 class for this. Martin has been replaced by Kelvin van der Linde, an experienced GT racer with Nurburging 24 Hours wins to his credit and a runner-up prize in the DTM in 2024.

From the outside, it would be easy to look at WRT putting all of its chips in the #31 car’s basket. For 2025, it has factory BMW hero Augusto Farfus, Timur Boguslavskiy and Le Mans winner Yasser Shahin - who steps over from Porsche - leading that car’s charge. But that’s not how Vosse sees it.

“I don’t think we ever entered a championship just to run a car,” he said. “So, we proved last year that both of our cars could win races or could fight for championships. Everyone was probably thinking that #46 could be the car and in the end it was the #31, which is also good for me. We have two race cars. Of course we have Vale in one car, [and] having Vale achieving his tenth world championship would be great. It would be a personal satisfaction. But the first job we have to do is to bring our cars to a competitive level - and both cars, not only one.”

Last November Rossi took part in the WEC rookie test in Bahrain driving one of BMW’s M8 Hybrid LMDh cars it races in the series’ top Hypercar class. In true Rossi fashion, this wasn’t done merely to scratch an itch.

Could this lead to something more in future?

Vosse says: “Vale wants to be competitive. If it’s in Hypercar or in GT, he wants to be competitive and win. If we jump into Hypercar now, we of course start behind and have to close the gap. Vale did the test in Bahrain and he was obviously too quick! He was exceptional.

“It fit exactly to what he needs to be quick. He was very enthusiastic and the smile out of the car was looking a bit like a race win [had been achieved], just because he was competitive. He was just somewhere on the top where he wants to be and it’s very difficult for a sportsman like him not to see his name on top of the list.”

Valentino Rossi in prototype sportscar machinery at Le Mans is a salivating prospect and one the WEC itself would struggle not to be happy with. The series has enjoyed some top names over the years setting foot in its championship. But Rossi fandom is something different - as Vosse found out in GTWCE a few years ago.

“The first race we did together was Imola 2022, and it was a nightmare,” he admits. “We could not expect that in a championship which, I would say, didn’t normally have all those Rossi fans - but the Rossi fans are not only fans of MotoGP. They are fans of Vale and they will move wherever Vale is.

“Of course, we had to adapt after that first race. We had to adapt a few things and had to be very well organised to take care of those fans. You don’t see this anywhere else. We know that in WEC there was Fernando Alonso or Jenson Button or Robert Kubica. They are the big stars of WEC, but it’s far from being on the level of Vale [in terms of fan following].”

Though Rossi is scaling back his racing commitments in 2025, he’s showing no signs of slowing down as he gears up for a second assault on the WEC. A tenth title (which is known as the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Drivers in WEC) will be no small task, but Rossi has so far proven he’s more than up to the challenge…