Valentino Rossi, or a Legend who has made his mark in sporting history! What is his story?

Valentino Rossi – one of the greatest legends and personalities not only of Moto GP, but of the sport as a whole. His career is interwoven with fascinating stories. The Doctor, as his nickname goes, has indeed achieved a lot and he is not to be surpassed. The conclusion of his career brings to an end, without exaggeration, a great era of motorsport. Yes, this Italian racer has made a huge impact on sporting history.

Like Michael Schumacher or Kimi Räikkönen, Valentino Rossi started out like many other motorsport athletes – on go-karts. He took part in his first kart race in 1989. A year later he made his mark in the regional championship in the Italian town of Urbino, in which he scored 9 victories.

He got a glimpse into the world of road bikes in 1993 when he made his debut in the Italian Cagiva Cup. These were 125cc bikes and he finished the first edition in third place. However, he dominated the next two. That’s also why in 1996 he became part of the Moto GP world, but not the royal cubature.

In any case, this was the year that Rossi began his spectacular career across the Moto GP world, making his debut on 31 March at the Malaysian Grand Prix, but his first pole position and his first victory came later, specifically in the eleventh race of the season.

Yes, you guessed right, Rossi celebrated his first victory at the Brno circuit. However, he finished ninth in the lowest Moto GP category, the 125cc class. In 1997, however, he signed a contract with Aprilia. And now it’s safe to say that this move was fatal for him.

He clearly dominated the 1997 season. He won eleven of the fifteen grand prix, and with 321 points and a lead of 83 points, he was able to celebrate the world championship for the first time. If we apply football terminology to this, Rossi’s fascinating feat guaranteed his promotion to the second highest competition, the 250cc class, or today’s Moto2.

But with 201 points, he was in second place at the end of the season. The following year, however, he won his second championship. The 2000 season was the first season when Rossi finally competed in the royal cubature, the so-called five hundred.

The 2000 season, however, is tied to one change – the Italian racer left the Aprilia team and signed with Honda, specifically the Nastro Azzuro Honda team.

In the top category, he managed to win his third title in the upcoming season. However, his rookie season was not bad at all, with Rossi finishing second in the standings, 39 points ahead of third-placed Biaggi.

The 2002 season brought with it one big change. Not only was the royal cubature renamed (since 2002 the top class has officially been called the Moto GP World Championship – ed.), but the change meant that the 500cc two-stroke engines were replaced by 990cc four-strokes.

This, of course, allowed the teams to produce much faster motorcycles.

In 2002, Rossi also switched to the factory Honda Repsol team, with which, as we all know too well today, he won two more World Championship titles.

The second one, it should be noted, was even more incredible than the previous one. It was two years in which the rider with the number 46 Moto GP number absolutely and without a doubt dominated. We can take a look at his record.

In the 2002 season he scored an incredible 355 points, seeing the chequered flag eleven times out of 16 races. He scored two more points in 2003, although he didn’t win as many majors as he did the year before. It should also be noted that Rossi didn’t decide his fifth title until the second half of the season.

After eight races he only won three times. However, the statistics for the other half of the season are absolutely staggering, Rossi managed to take six wins from the rest of the season (i.e. from the remaining eight races)!

At the end of the season, however, he probably gave everyone involved a shock. Rossi, unbeknown to Honda, had agreed to join Yamaha, and with the mid-season break, the transfer was complete. The opening season with the new team was not as successful in points as the previous two, but even 304 points were enough to defend the title.

He has been with Yamaha for most of his career. Apart from 2011 and 2012, when he lent his services to the Ducati stable, we haven’t seen Rossi race for another team since the 2004 season. Better said, it’s also not true of this year, when Rossi switched from the factory Yamaha team to the satellite Yamaha Petronas SRT team.

In fact, there was no reason to switch again, as he won four more world titles with the factory marque – the aforementioned 2004 title, followed by 2005, 2008 and 2009.

In 2005 and 2008, we can again talk about absolutely fantastic performances. In the first case, his points total climbed to 367, in the 2008 season he collected a total of 373 points! These are figures that few riders in Moto GP history have been able to emulate.

In any case, in these two years he managed to win twenty races and, for example, in 2005 he celebrated the overall victory with a margin of 147 points! 2009 was the last year in which he could celebrate his ninth and last championship title.

Yet he did not start 2017 badly at all and in previous years he was relatively close to the title. In any case, the competition was too great in those years, for example in 2014 Marc Márquez, Jorge Lorenzo or Dani Pedrosa also attacked the championship title. In that period, from the 2014 to 2016 seasons, Rossi was runner-up every time.

Twice he was beaten by Spain’s Márquez, who was riding in the form of his life at the time, and once by Lorenzo, who was also an excellent racer. Moreover, it is true in motorsport, especially nowadays, that age is a significant factor in the battle for the title. As several figures from the world of motorsport have already revealed, it is increasingly necessary to adapt to various circumstances, to be agile, predatory and to have very quick reactions.

Rossi himself admitted this in an interview at the time. Needless to say, Rossi also suffered an injury in 2017 that slowed him down considerably in his fight for the title.

All in all, The Doctor has therefore intervened in 424 races, a 44% participation rate with respect to the entire history of Moto GP racing. It’s almost majestic that one man accounts for almost half of the history of such a well-known and vast competition as Moto GP undoubtedly is.

He has also reached the milestone of 115 victories. The last one was in the 2017 Dutch Grand Prix, at the age of 38. Sixty-five times he has enjoyed pole position and 235 times he has appeared on the podium.

At the end of this season, he brought his 26-year career to a definitive close and, together with Giacomo Agostini, is Moto GP’s greatest legend. It’s no exaggeration to say that with his end comes the end of a great era, not only in road racing but in motorsport as a whole.

Now there is only one thing left to do. And that is to thank Rossi for the great spectacle and amazing stories he has offered us throughout his career – Grazie Vale!

Sources: Moto GP, Yamaha Racing