Shop
That is the declaration of Andreas Roos, the Head of BMW M Motorsport, which counts the seven-time MotoGP champion as one of its factory drivers.
When Rossi made his Mount Panorama debut in 2023, he received the rockstar treatment from fans while the state’s biggest newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, dedicated its back page to him.
But, do not be fooled about his capability as a driver, warns Roos.
“We saw already last year with Valentino Rossi there, how many fans and how big the crowd was, cheering for Valentino,” he told select media, including Speedcafe.
“But, from the beginning, it was clear for us that Valentino Rossi is not there because he’s just a, let’s say, marketing tool for us and it’s nice to have him.
“It was, from the beginning, clear that we want to have Valentino as a race driver, and he is a race driver, like all our other race drivers, and he’s competing on a very, very high level on the GT side.
“You saw already last year, when it was his first time at the Mount Panorama, especially in the tricky mountain section, how quick he was.
“He was on the lap times of our very well experienced factory drivers and he managed already last year to win races.”
Rossi dabbled in car racing during his glittering motorcycle career, and flirted seemingly seriously with a switch to Formula 1 in the mid-2000s.
He joined WRT in 2022, once he retired from MotoGP, and was arguably akin to a gentleman driver in his GT World Challenge Europe exploits.
However, the Italian became a BMW factory driver once WRT shifted its allegiances from Audi in order to run the M Hybrid V8 LMDh in the World Endurance Championship.
On just his first day at Mount Panorama, with only one year as a full-time four-wheel competitor under his belt, Rossi lapped just a quarter of a second slower than Sheldon van der Linde in the sister WRT BMW M4 GT3.
This year, he will also drive that car in the World Endurance Championship following the introduction of the LMGT3 class, and Roos surmises that there simply must be crossover in the skillsets required to win motorcycle world championships and car races.
“I mean, you don’t have to say anything; when somebody is a nine-time world champion [including 125cc and 250cc], there must be something that makes him special or makes him maybe different to others,” continued Roos.
“He is clearly so highly motivated and such a professional person that is putting so much effort into competing also now on the car side.
“He’s really preparing himself, he is training, he is looking into data with the engineers like no tomorrow… He really wants to understand everything.”
This year, the 44-year-old will share the M4 bearing his famous #46 at Mount Panorama with Maxime Martin and new BMW driver Raffaele Marciello, who has finished on the podium three times in the Bathurst 12 Hour.
That too is a measure of ‘The Doctor,’ says Roos.
“For him, it’s also very important to have very competitive team-mates,” he added.
“It could be, for him, easy to have a slower team-mate and just always look good and be quicker than them.
“No, he wants the competition and he wants to see where he has to be and where the level is, and I think he showed several times last year that he can be really fully on this level, and I think there’s still more to come,
“He enjoys it a lot and we enjoy working with him a lot so, for us, it’s definitely a win-win situation, and for sure for everybody in motorsport; for the spectators, for us as a brand, for the people organising the race and everything.
“I mean it’s perfect to have somebody like Valentino Rossi coming to a race track and also attracting additional people and additional crowd, and maybe also getting a bit a link between the two-wheel side and the four-wheel side.
“At the end, it’s a nice win-win situation but, definitely, was it clear that it’s Valentino Rossi in the first place as a race driver, and he has to perform like all the other race drivers.”
WRT will again field two BMW M4 GT3s in the Bathurst 12 Hour, the other to be driven by van der Linde, 2018 race winner Dries Vanthoor, and Charles Weerts.
