Seven-time MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi is considering the World Endurance Championship over the GT World Challenge Europe as he downscales his race programme for next season.
The BMW factory driver has revealed that the German manufacturer is steering him towards the WEC rather than a full campaign across the Endurance and Sprint Cup legs of the GTWCE in 2025.
Rossi, who contested the WEC’s new LMGT3 class and seven GTWCE events with the WRT team this year, said that at the moment his decision is “more towards the WEC”, but stressed that he has yet to make a final call.
That will not be made until after the final GTWCE enduro in Jeddah at the end of this month.
“I have quite a lot of pressure from BMW to remain in the WEC because for them it is more important,” the 45-year-old Italian explained over the course of last weekend’s final round of the 2024 WEC in Bahrain.
“I am a little bit uncertain and I haven’t decided yet. Some things are better here, some things are better there.”
Rossi has previously pointed to the prestige of racing in a world championship and the opportunity it presents to compete at the Le Mans 24 Hours, while stressing the ultra-competitiveness of GT3-only racing in the GTWCE in which he competes in the Pro class.
#20 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8: Valentino Rossi
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
He has decided to cut down on the number of races he will contest from 16 this year to 10 or 11 next season for family reasons at a time when the birth of his second child is imminent.
To achieve that, he will have to drop out of one of the championships that have been part of his 2024 programme.
Should he choose the GTWCE, it is likely that he would do both legs of the series in which he has achieved his greatest success since his full-time swap to four wheels following his retirement from MotoGP at the end of 2020.
He took a solo Sprint Cup victory in each of the 2023 and ’24 seasons driving a BMW M4 GT3 for BMW, the former as part of a full campaign, the latter over the two short-format GTWCE events he contested alongside a full campaign in the enduros.
Rossi reaffirmed his intent to contest the Bathurst 12 Hours, the opening round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge next February, for a third year in succession.
Had he continued to race in both WEC and GTWCE, the Australian enduro would likely have been a casualty of his efforts to reduce his number of races.
Rossi played down the chances of him racing BMW’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh after his try-out in a WRT-run car at last weekend’s WEC rookie test in Bahrain.
He said that he was “happy to test the [Le Mans] Hypercar and put it in my collection”.
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