Marco Bezzecchi
Valentino Rossi says conversations with Troy Bayliss and Michael Schumacher convinced him to keep racing in MotoGP for as long as possible.
Rossi made his debut in Grand Prix racing in 1996 and competed until 2021, when he was 41 years old. The Italian made 372 starts in the premier class alone, 113 more than second-place Aleix Espargaro.
Rossi won his last world championship in 2009, though he did finish runner-up for three straight seasons between 2014 and 2016. His final race win came at the 2017 Dutch TT, and he dropped into the midfield in his last two years.
Give us your MotoGP Mount Rushmore
Valentino Rossi didn’t want to have regrets like Troy Bayliss
Speaking on the Tintoria podcast, Rossi said the ‘pleasure of racing’ motivated him to keep competing, as well as the challenge of matching ‘younger, stronger riders’.
He was also wary that he might regret hanging up his helmet too early. Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher was 37 when he first retired, but Rossi says he could have ‘continued’; he ultimately returned to the grid in 2010.
Likewise, Rossi looked at Bayliss, who won three World Superbikes titles either side of a stint in MotoGP. The Australian bowed out as a world champion in 2008 at the age of 39 before a brief four-race comeback in 2015 as an injury substitute.
“I’ve always loved racing and racing motorcycles and I said I want to race until I really can’t anymore,” Rossi said. “I was talking to Schumacher once and another time I remember [talking to] Troy Bayliss, I saw them really sad because they stopped when they could still continue.
“So I said I’ll race until I can’t do it anymore and that’s what I did. And then the motivation is the pleasure of racing.
“Then when I got older I won less, so I compared myself with riders of another generation, younger, stronger and so the motivation was trying to raise my level, trying to understand how to go fast with them.”
‘Many drivers are my fans’ – Valentino Rossi on his switch to car racing
Even after stepping away from MotoGP, Rossi continued to compete, this time on four wheels. To this day, he remains active in GT racing.
Asked how he is perceived by the other drivers, Rossi pointed out that many of his competitors idolised him while they were growing up.
“Many drivers are my fans,” he said. “They’re more or less 28 or 26-year-old guys, and so that generation is all people who grew up with me.”
Rossi also runs the VR46 MotoGP team, though his attendance at races is limited by his own racing programme.
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