Valentino Rossi has announced that he and his girlfriend, Francesca Novello, are expecting their second child.
Rossi made the announcement in a simple social media post with a selection of photos and the caption “La Franci è incinta, aspettiamo un’altra bambina,” which translates to “Franci is pregnant, we are expecting another little girl.”
In the photos, Rossi is dressed as a doctor, in a nod to the nickname he held throughout much of his career: “The Doctor”. They mimic the photos posted by Rossi when he announced that he was expecting his first child, Giulietta, in the summer of 2021, around the same time he announced his retirement from full-time motorcycle racing.
The nine-times World Champion, a Yamaha ambassador and owner of the VR46 Ducati team in MotoGP, has not competed in a motorcycle race since the 2021 Valencia Grand Prix, but has become a factory GT3 driver for BMW in the meantime. The Italian began his GT3 career with the WRT team and Audi in 2022, but the team switched to BMW last year in order to take on its factory World Endurance Championship (WEC) effort in the Hypercar class — the switch in GT3 machinery came with it.
In the BMW M4 GT3, Rossi has finished on the podium multiple times in the GT World Challenge Europe (GTWCE) series, including two wins — both at Misano — and this year stepped up to WEC in combination with his GTWCE commitments. In WEC, Rossi scored his first podium earlier this year at round two in Imola, before his #46 BMW was involved in multi-car crashes at both Spa and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the latter of which Rossi’s car had been leading at times.
Lead image credit: Valentino Rossi/Facebook.
