Following the Austin GP Valentino Rossi flew to North Carolina with Yamaha’s Lin Jarvis to take part in a promotional event for sponsor Monster Energy with three time NASCAR champion Kyle Busch at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The MotoGP champion got a chance to drive Busch’s V8 650hp Toyota Camry after getting instructions and pointers from Busch on how to handle the powerful car – Rossi has tested a Ferrari F1 a few times, driven a Ferrari 458 Italia in several endurance races, and driven a Subaru Impreza WRC, a Ford car and he also tested a Mercedes C-Klasse DTM car – but driving along 24-degree banked turns was a first for the Italian who was able to get up to around 185 miles per hour and actually able to drop his lap times.
Talking about the fascinating experience Rossi said, “At the beginning it was a bit strange because it’s difficult to go straight.
But after some laps, I had a lot of confidence and I was able to go faster and faster and faster.
I must say I got along very well with Kyle.
He’s a good guy.
I like him and he gave me a lot of important advice.
”“It was so cool to understand the feeling!I have a lot of friends from Europe and Italy who follow NASCAR.
It looks like it’s a completely different type of racing than what we do in Europe and I expected something more like this –exciting, high speed and a great feeling in the corner.
In the bank you have a lot of grip, so you are glued on the racetrack.
It was great, I enjoyed it a lot.
I love driving the race car, and I always have, so it was exciting to drive a NASCAR,” concluded Rossi.
Busch was impressed by Rossi’s talent on four wheels and said, “I thought it was a really cool experience and it also helps when you have two guys who are enthusiastic about their sport and have a good mantra about it.
I think Rossi is a really cool dude.
We were just having fun, hanging out together.
To me, I thought the experience was awesome.
It’s cool Monster Energy brought us together, it was a lot of fun.
Just getting the feeling of asking him about his sport and him asking me about NASCAR a little bit.
Just having the dialogue there was good.
And as far as driving the car, I thought he did pretty good.
He started out a little slow, which is fine, but every lap he picked it up a lot.
He got to where he was running some competitive lap speeds – times that would put him in the top-15 in Nationwide Series practice.
That’s pretty good for a guy in his first start, who is just coming over and getting used to things and someone that is used to driving on two wheels.
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