(ANSA) - Italian motorcycling world
champion Valentino Rossi took the wheel of a Ferrari Formula 1 car again on Wednesday as he and the Italian team caressed the dream of properly joining forces in 2007.
Rossi, who has just renewed his contract with Yamaha until the end of 2006, began another intense session in the cockpit of the Ferrari F2004 after completing 80 laps with it here on Tuesday.
Whereas in the past Rossi's outings in Ferrari Formula 1 cars were presented as little more than fun rides, this time - with Ferrari studying its future options carefully - the experience looks much more serious.
Ferrari has just said goodbye to Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and replaced him for one year with another Brazilian Felipe Massa. Seven-times world champ Michael Schumacher's contract runs out next year.
Although neither Ferrari nor Rossi have confirmed anything, the scenario being considered by both appears clear, media pundits say. The dream they are reportedly toying with is to have Rossi switch from two wheels to four in 2007 and have him drive for Ferrari, probably alongside Finnish star Kimi
Raikkonen, currently with McLaren.
As well as bringing an Italian driver to Ferrari for the first time in over 20 years, this set-up would be a marketing jackpot. Rossi, 27, is one of the most colourful and well-loved Italian personalities in any sport. He already generates millions of euros as a motorcycling star. As a Formula 1 driver those earnings could increase exponentially. Rossi's most recent comment on the possibility of switching to Formula 1 came at Assen on June 23, when he said he was "not interested" in such a move. But only three months earlier, in Paris, he said: "10 years riding bikes is to long."
As observers noted as he turned up for what is now his fourth bout in a Ferrari, the only possible explanation for this continued interest is that he is seriously weighing his options. Ferrari too presumably want to see whether the motorcyclist has any real chance of successfully making a switch which only one man, Britain's John Surtees, has ever done before.
Surtees won four world motorcycling titles before switching to cars in 1960. In 1964, at the age of 30, he won a world title driving a Ferrari. Rossi's move from Honda to Yamaha two years ago, to prove that it's the rider not the bike that makes the difference, showed he needs challenges.
Now heading for his fifth straight world championship title in the top flight of motorcycling, the Italian rider may be feeling there's little else he has to prove in MotoGP.
