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Valentino Rossi is of course most famous for his exploits on motorbikes, in MotoGP. But now he's embarked on a "second career", fulfilling a dream he's always wanted to achieve: to be a racing driver, and specifically to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
With Rossi now a bonafide BMW factory driver, on the same level as drivers such as Dries Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde, TRL thought it'd be interesting to have a look how he compares to his stablemates at the German manufacturer.
To compare, we've got hold of the data from the recent Spa 24 Hours (thanks to Timing71), averaging out each driver's best 20% laptimes and find their average pace over the race.
Pace
As you can see from the graph, when compared to his teammates at BMW M Team WRT, Rossi is well within the performance window required. In fact, he was actually slightly quicker, on average, compared to Charles Weerts, who alongside Dries Vanthoor, won three GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cups, in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The duo also lead this year, now driving for BMW — Rossi and teammate Maxime Martin are fifth, for comparison.
However, while Rossi is within that window, he's still around eight tenths a lap on average off Vanthoor, the fastest WRT BMW driver on average at Spa. So he's got some way to go. But, he wasn't too much slower than his own teammates in the #46 BMW, Maxime Martin and Raffaele Marciello, just under two tenths a lap off the latter. For a driver who started car racing properly in 2022, that's outstanding, against a GT3 specialist, often named as one of the best in the world.
If you widen the net to include the six drivers from the Rowe Racing BMWs, Rossi is still well within the performance window required, and was faster than Nick Yelloly at Spa, when average pace is considered.
The #998 BMW drivers, though — Augusto Farfus, Dan Harper, and Max Hesse — were much quicker, but Marco Wittmann, in the sister #98 car, was even quicker. So Rossi has even further to go before if he wants to be on par with BMW's best.
Unfortunately, as the track was under caution, either full course yellow or safety car, when Philipp Eng drove the #98 BMW, we can't include him in this analysis.
Racecraft
However, while Rossi's pace in the BMW M4 GT3 is now in a good place, he needs to do more work on his racecraft.
An FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar driver told TRL earlier this year that the lines Rossi takes are more bike-like than typical racing drivers, which makes overtaking him in WEC races, as a Hypercar driver, a little unpredictable at times. While this is understandable considering he did 20 plus years in motorcycle racing, with huge amounts of success, before switching to cars, it is something he is likely working to get on top of.
Phil Oakley
As TRL reported on a few months ago, and is well known by now, Rossi's aim is to race a Hypercar in WEC and at Le Mans. However, as we reported on, Rossi isn't sure if he's fast enough for Hypercar.
While the pace question may be answered by the above section — although pace in a GT3 is very different from pace in a Hypercar — another question may be whether he's good enough.
His test in a Hypercar at Bahrain later this year will be very interesting indeed.
Rossi's other racecraft problem is making mistakes. While he was an incredible overtaker on a motorcycle, passing rivals like they were standing still, it's a different ball game in a car.
His most notable mistake this year so far came at Spa 24 Hours, where he hit Nicolo Rosi in the #8 Kessel Ferrari at the Les Combes complex of corners. This caused the Ferrari to collect the #35 Walkenhorst Aston Martin of Romain Leroux as Rosi headed towards the barriers.
This meant Rossi, in the BMW, had to pit for repairs, with the car being pushed back into the garage to have its nose bodywork replaced. Subsequently, from running consistently in the top 10 and looking good for a decent result, the #46 BMW finished 24th overall.
This isn't to say Rossi's racecraft is inherently 'bad' - just that it may need work. While Rossi has won shorter sprint events in SRO competition, hew hasn't yet won a race longer than an hour. If he wants to win major endurance races, or even 'shorter' endurance races like in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, or in WEC with the 6 hour races, he'll need to eliminate any mistakes and improve his consistency.
