Seven-time MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi could quit the World Endurance Championship to focus on the GT World Challenge Europe as he looks to downscale his racing in 2025.
The BMW factory driver has explained to Motorsport.com that he is planning to cut back on the number of races he contests from this year’s 16 events primarily for family reasons, which include the imminent birth of his second child.
This represents a shift in his position from earlier in 2024, when he outlined a desire to continue racing with the WRT team in both WEC and the Endurance Cup leg of the GTWCE for a second season.
“I realised that 16 races is too many and I am in the same situation as in MotoGP,” said the 45-year-old Italian, who will be going into his fourth full season of car racing after his retirement from two wheels.
“I’m tired and my partner, Francesca, gets angry because I am always on the road.
“For 2025 my goal is to run 10 to 11 races: I will have to decide whether to do GTWCE or WEC.
“One is a world championship, so winning the title has special prestige, but in the Stephane Ratel Organisation races [GTWCE] the racing is really good with only GT3 cars.”
#46 Team WRT BMW M4 LMGT3: Ahmad Al Harthy, Valentino Rossi, Maxime Martin, #31 Team WRT BMW M4 LMGT3: Darren Leung, Sean Gelael, Augusto Farfus
Photo by: Andreas Beil
Rossi’s expression of a desire to reduce his racing activities is not new, but he had previously described the 13 races of a programme combining WEC and the long-distance GTWCE events as “a really good number”.
He revealed at the same time that he was unlikely to contest the Bathurst 12 Hours round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge in February 2025 as he has done for the past two seasons because it will conflict with his 46th birthday. It will be a significant celebration, he pointed out, because his race number throughout his MotoGP career was #46.
Now he has said that his 2025 season “will start in Bathurst”.
WRT boss Vincent Vosse clarified Rossi’s position to Motorsport.com: “Vale wants to reduce his number of races and the only way to do that is to do just one championship.
“It is a decision that has to be taken: does he do WEC or GTWCE? It’s something that is up in the air and really isn’t clear at the moment.
“There are many factors, and one is the BMW’s performance in the WEC, which hasn’t been what we were expecting, and another is Valentino’s FIA driver categorisation.”
Rossi was downgraded from gold to silver status for this year, paving the way for his move into the WEC in LMGT3, where each car must run a bronze and a second non-professional who is usually a silver.
#46 Team WRT, BMW M4 GT3: Raffaele Marciello, Maxime Martin, Valentino Rossi
Photo by: SRO
Asked whether a GTWCE campaign could expand to include the five events of the Sprint Cup in which Rossi is a two-time race winner, Vosse replied: “That is all part of the discussion and we don’t have a clear feeling yet.”
With the addition of the WEC to his programme this year, Rossi contested only two of the Sprint weekends, at Brands Hatch courtesy of his love for the circuit and his home race at Misano.
Rossi has unilaterally announced that he will be driving BMW’s M Hybrid V8 Hypercar class contender at the WEC rookie test in Bahrain on 3 November.
BMW and WRT have yet to confirm the date of his promised run in the LMDh, though have clarified that it will be before the end of the year.
Vosse said: “It looks like he will drive the prototype before the end of the year as we said, and the best opportunity for that looks like the rookie test.”
Rossi stressed that racing the LMDh in the future “is not the goal I have set” but hinted at a desire to race in the top class of the WEC.
“I would love to race in Hypercar because it is the MotoGP of prototypes,” he said. “Maybe in the future there will be a place in Hypercar — let’s see.”