MotoGP star Valentino Rossi will contest this year’s Gulf 12 Hours alongside his half-brother Luca Marini and his long-time advisor and friend Uccio Salucci in Ferrari 488 GT3.
Rossi told Sky Italia that the trio will share the car for the event, which will take place at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi on December 14.
The seven-time premier class champion will take part in the endurance race instead of the Monza Rally Show, an event he won for the seventh time last December, as he wants to “change genre” with his car racing outings.
“We will not do the Monza Rally,” Rossi said. “We will change genre, we need to do other things.”
Rossi is not the first high-profile MotoGP rider to have entered the Gulf 12 Hours, as Honda rider Jorge Lorenzo contested the race back in 2014.
Lorenzo shared a Kessel Racing Ferrari 458 with Liam Talbot, Marco Zanuttini and Jacques Duvyer during that outing, which ended with the quartet securing a class win.
Rossi has previously shared a Kessel-run 458 with Salucci in two rounds of the Blancpain Endurance Series in 2012.