MotoGP People: Valentino Rossi will start 3rd in his class at the 24 2025 Hours of Le Mans

During the qualifying rounds for the 24 2025 Hours of Le Mans, which brought its share of good and bad surprises, the star of the MotoGP Valentino Rossi had to face a difficult challenge and did very well.

While in the Hypercar category Cadillac monopolized the front row ahead of the BMWs and the Porsches, to the great displeasure of the Ferrari and Toyota teams whose first cars only appeared on the 4th and 5th rows, the man from Tavullia had to take on a heavy challenge for the BMW M4 #46 of the Belgian team WRT.

The new qualifying format (Hyperpole) required the participation of different drivers in the two H1 and H2 sessions, each lasting 20 minutes.

At the wheel of the BMW #46, there will be three of them taking turns this Saturday from 16 p.m., the South African Kelvin Van Der Linde, ranked Platinum (Very high level professional driver (F1, IndyCar, WEC, etc.)), the Italian Valentino Rossi ranked Silver (Semi-professional driver or young talent), and the Omani Ahamad Al Harty Bronze classified (Experienced amateur driver, often gentleman driver).

The latter qualified the BMW in Hyperpole by achieving the best time (3'56.875) of the 30-minute session, then the WRT team chose to send the first two mentioned to defend the chances of the M4, but Kelvin Van Der Linde in Hyperpole 1 and Valentino Rossi in Hyperpole 2. A risky bet which certainly ensured that the BMW would find itself in Hyperpole 2 (only the top 8 from Hyperpole 1 go there), but left it up to the Italian to determine the car's place among the top 8 in its category...

Very fast, the South African set the best time in his category, in 3'54.345 before handing over the wheel to the nine-time world champion who then had to face a number of Gold (Professional driver, less titled than a Platinum) and Platinum drivers!

But in 3'54.966, The Doctor was able to pull off a perfect performance, finishing 3rd in its category and only losing to the #27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Matthias Drudi (Platinum) and the Ferrari 296 #21 ofAlessio Rovera (Platinum).

It is therefore a Valentino Rossi particularly happy who took off his helmet, before declaring: "We did a very good job and I'm very happy. I was in the middle of the pros, but my track position was excellent and I put in a very good lap. Third place is a great position to start the race. The gap to pole position is significant, but we hope to be competitive during the race."

Behind the Hypercars and LMP2s, the WRT BMW GT3 will start from the 22nd row, for a race within the race that we hope will be more successful than last year (Ahamad Al Harthy crashed during the night).