Unbelievable, Valentino Rossi—the car door flies off: "It looked like an Apecar

Valentino Rossi’s adventure in the GT World Challenge Europe continues, with highs, lows, and on-track surprises. At the Catalunya circuit, the former MotoGP rider experienced a “sui generis” moment he will likely never forget...

This time, not even an experienced driver like the Doctor could have imagined such an incident. After all, on a MotoGP bike, certain events simply can’t happen. Valentino Rossi was competing in the second round of the GT WCE in Barcelona when the left door of his BMW M4 GT3 came off on track! Yes, the driver’s side door.

The 47-year-old from Tavullia continued driving for a moment with the door wide open before returning to the pits. The incident occurred about 20 minutes before the checkered flag. Rossi was in 12th place with the #46 BMW of Team WRT and was trying to maintain the strong pace he had built during his stint. But the driver’s side door suddenly disappeared, and it’s unclear what caused the part to detach from the car.

The team had no choice but to call the MotoGP Legend back to the pits. Driving the car in those conditions was risky, and race control would not have allowed the BMW to stay on track much longer without fixing the issue. The stop turned out to be much longer than expected. The mechanics had to reattach the door and prepare the BMW to resume the race.

This practically wiped out any chance of a good result. Rossi and his teammate Max Hesse finished the race in 38th place, after spending a period in the middle of the pack. The time lost repairing the car proved too much to recover the lost positions. A real shame for Valentino Rossi, as the race was starting to go well after Hesse’s excellent first stint.

The champion from Tavullia still had several laps available to try to improve his position, but the unexpected door failure completely changed his plans. "A lot happened this weekend, huh? But only bad things. Anyway...", Rossi commented. "Everything happened, it looked like an Ape car... We were unlucky, we’ll see in the next race."

After the poor result in Barcelona, the #46 still has one final GT World Challenge Europe race this season. It will take place in Portimao from October 16 to 18, in the final round of the Endurance Cup. Also on track will be Max Verstappen, who will compete with a Mercedes-AMG from the Verstappen Racing team and return to GT racing after his participation in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring earlier this year.

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