Valencia: Valentino Rossi’s 11th place on Saturday / GT World Challenge

For the 2022 season, Valentino Rossi has switched to motorsports and competes in the GT World Challenge Europe with the 585-horsepower Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II engine from the Belgian WRT team. The ninth weekend of racing is currently taking place at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo near Valencia, known from MotoGP. The first two races were held for about an hour on Saturday afternoon. It was only enough for Rossi and teammate Frederic Vervich to finish 11th.

“Il Dottore” had already run into the heats on Saturday morning with a time of 1:31.045. He was 0.578 seconds behind his starting time in twelfth place. Because of a competitor’s net penalty, Rossi started the race from eleventh on the net. The starting phase was really turbulent. In some cases, three of the vehicles passed side by side through the curves. Rossi had to assert himself and manage this reasonably well. He finished the first lap 12th – so he only lost one place.

A few seconds later, the race control system fired the safety car stage due to the crash of the Porsche. About ten minutes into the race, the track was again cleaned with the green flag. Shortly thereafter, Rossi slipped to thirteenth. Keep it until the pit stop window has opened.

Shortly after the middle of the race, his teammate Frederic Vervich took over the Audi cockpit from Rossi. In the second half of the race, the Belgian climbed to 11th place. More was simply not possible in the heavily busy field that day. Ulysse de Pauw and Pierre Alexandre Jean in the AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 took the victory.

A second race (including previous qualifiers) is scheduled for Sunday in Valencia. Here’s how to watch the action on TV and broadcast.