To misquote George Orwell’s Animal Farm, 4 wheels good, 2 wheels bad.





At least according to multiple MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi, who was testing last week with Ferrari in Valencia. The word seems to be that its not a question of if Rossi heads to Formula 1, but when – or at least it was until he spun out of the first corner in the rain. At that point all the old heads were nodding sagely “See, it’s a different game altogether.” There’s no question that a fairly substantial contingent of ‘Old School F1-ers’ will be miffed if he changes code and extremely pissed off if he proves to be a winner. But Rossi recovered well from his early errors and in the dry, at least, he proved his credentials by completing 52 laps, many quicker than Coultard, Trulli and Webber, even coming within ½ a second of Mr. Schumacher himself.


The fact is that as a marketing tool, an Italian driver in a Ferrari is a coup; that the man should also be a World Champion and national hero to boot would be a major coup. In my opinion, even if he couldn’t overtake my granny’s Nova, he’d still get a drive.
But the fact is, he’s good; with a little practice, he’ll be very good and that’s impossible for Ferrari to ignore.

As bike fans will happily inform you, nobody’s ever transitioned from Formula 1 to bikes but John Surtees successfully went the other way and became a world champion in both. In a recent interview, Surtees reckoned its not as complicated as it looks, saying with typical English understatement:

"Put simply, you're having to control with your right foot what you normally control with your right hand," he said. "It is a case of adapting to the techniques required with a car, but there is not a huge difference in the way the driver has to understand his vehicle.

"You're strapped in to a car and you don't have the freedom of movement you do with a bike. You can't control it by your bodyweight, you have to sense it and put it through the four wheels.

"But the basic race knowledge and craft you've learnt in two wheels can certainly be applied to four wheels."

Although he's got to learn to stop spinning the car, there is now a very strong likelihood that Rossi will be starting for Ferrari in 2007. For a team that could do with some big money sponsors, the publicity he could garner for the team would be enormous.
Rossi in F1 would be good for the sport as a whole, because it could attract new fans in and give it added TV interest and his arrival could hasten the departure of Schumi himself.


Valencia's test proved to be very significant.


Do you remember the ending of Animal Farm? Four wheels good, two wheels better – we’ll see in ‘07