MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi will stay in the WEC’s LMGT3 class for a second season and will now share the 46 WRT-BMW with Kelvin van der Linde
Valentino Rossi will remain with the World Endurance Championship (WEC) for a second season. As his employer BMW officially announced on Tuesday, the nine-time motorcycle world champion will also compete for WRT in the LMGT3 class for the entire 2025 WEC season.
As in his WEC debut year in 2024, Rossi will again be one of three regular drivers in the BMW M4 GTT3 Evo with the starting number 46 in the new season. He will continue to share the cockpit with bronze driver Ahmad Al Harthy from Oman. However, the professional driver in the line-up is new.
Instead of Maxime Martin, who left BMW for Mercedes during the winter, BMW newcomer Kelvin van der Linde will now share the WRT cockpit with Rossi and Al Harthy.
“I’m very happy to continue my journey in the WEC, because we had a strong debut season last year,” said Rossi. ”We had some good races including two podiums. Now we want to try to be even stronger and faster.”
Rossi is already focusing on the WEC season highlight, the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 14-15. “Le Mans is obviously the most important race. We had bad luck there last year, but we will be fighting for the podium in 2025,” “The Doctor” is sure.
In the 2024 WEC season, Rossi, together with Martin and Al Harthy, made it onto the LMGT3 class podium twice. At the 6h Monza, the trio took second place, and at the 6h Fuji, third place. At the 24h Le Mans, they recorded a strong performance after a disappointing retirement.
Meanwhile, the second WRT-BMW (car number 31) has two new drivers for the 2025 WEC season. Augusto Farfus remains on board, but will be joined by Timur Boguslawski and Yasser Shahin. They succeed Sean Gelael and Darren Leung, who are now both driving for McLaren.
