Valentino Rossi: “It’s a real shame that we missed out on the podium”

Valentino Rossi’s home race in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup at Misano is now behind the nine-time Motorcycle World Champion. Together with the fast German driver Max Hesse, Rossi shared a BMW M4 GT3 from the Belgian WRT team on his home circuit. Rossi was aiming to secure his fourth home victory in four years in the highly competitive SRO championship.

The weekend got off to an excellent start for the 47-year-old crowd favourite. In qualifying for the first race, Rossi secured pole position in the BMW M4 GT3 bearing the legendary #46 start number. It was the first time he had secured the top spot on the grid in Europe’s most competitive GT3 racing series, making him the oldest driver to date to claim pole position in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup. A record for the history books!

But at the start, everything went wrong for Rossi: the motorsport legend pulled up slightly off-centre from his starting grid position, for which he had to serve a 10-second penalty during the race. Furthermore, this was seen as one of the triggers for the start-line collision, in which Rossi’s BMW was struck several times but was able to continue the race. Rossi subsequently lost his place at the front and dropped back to fourth.

Despite a strong performance from Rossi and Max Hesse, sixth place was the best they could manage after the penalty.

For Sunday’s race, Max Hesse qualified in third place on the grid. The lightning-fast German held this position throughout the first half of the race, but towards the end of his stint he fell slightly behind the two frontrunners due to a problem with one of his tyres. In the closing stages of the race, Mercedes-AMG star Lucas Auer overtook Rossi on the penultimate lap, meaning he finished the race in fourth place and had to make the journey home to Tavulia without another podium finish.

“It’s a real shame that we missed out on the podium. Especially because, without the penalty, we could have finished second yesterday. Today, I tried everything I could at the end to defend my position, but the other car was simply too fast and overtook me on the final lap. That’s really bitter. We also had a tyre problem at the end of Max’s stint, which cost us a few seconds. There was nothing we could do about it – sometimes that’s just how it goes,” said Rossi, summing up the race weekend on Sunday evening.

His team-mate Max Hesse adds: “I’d say it was a weekend of missed opportunities. Overall, though, we still have to be satisfied. We were lucky twice: yesterday, the race could have been over for us very early on. And today, my puncture could have had far worse consequences. That’s why the points we’ve picked up are very important. Of course, it’s still a shame, because yesterday we definitely had the pace for victory and today we certainly had it for a podium finish. And for Vale, there couldn’t be a better place for that than his home race. Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on our side this time. It’s disappointing, but the team did a brilliant job. Congratulations to number 32 on the one-two finish – that’s fantastic for their championship. Magny-Cours is coming up soon, and that’s where we’re focusing our attention now.”