Before Giacomo Agostini became a 15-time motorcycle world champion, he was confronted with an extraordinary offer: Enzo Ferrari wanted to sign him to Formula 1. The offer was tempting, but after careful consideration, Agostini’s passion for motorcycling was the deciding factor.
What if Agostini had followed in John Surtees’ footsteps to achieve the feat that even today seems to surpass all other achievements: becoming world champion on both motorcycles and Formula 1 cars?
Agostini was already a star when he was given the opportunity to switch categories and compete in the premier class on four wheels. That was in 1966 and 1967, and the idea as such was not that unusual at the time.
A few years earlier, Mike Hailwood – Agostini’s first big opponent – had taken the risk and competed in a few Grands Prix in Formula 1 for Reg Parnell Racing. The Brit did the whole thing in the midst of three seasons in which he won the 500cc title (1963, 1964, 1965).
“Mike The Bike” later competed in Formula 1 again and even reached the podium twice (Monza 1972 and Kyalami 1974). Apart from that, he also competed in other automobile racing series. He even became Formula 2 champion in 1972 with the Surtees team.
Giacomo Agostini, on the other hand, was not yet 25 years old when he got his chance. His motorcycle career had just taken off and his first 500cc title rewarded his pure talent with success with his favorite manufacturer MV Agusta.
“Huge” offer from Enzo Ferrari, but…
But Enzo Ferrari also became aware of “Ago” and tried to get him into Formula 1 for the Scuderia. The “Commendatore” had Agostini test a Ferrari Dino 206 S Berlinetta and, convinced of its potential, wanted to lure him into Grand Prix racing.
“Ferrari let me test a car,” says Giacomo Agostini for the French-language edition of Motorsport.com. “I often met him in Modena because Ferrari was testing at the same track as me. He suggested it to me, I did a test and thought about it for a few days. The thought of Ferrari offering me a car was huge! “
But doubts also began to arise in Agostini’s mind. Ultimately, his first passion took over again. “Ever since I was a child, I thought about racing motorcycles, not racing cars. So why should I deceive myself now that I’m so successful, winning every Sunday or being on the podium? Why should I give up something that has fascinated me from the start made me dream?” the now 81-year-old Italian thinks back.
“I didn’t dream of cars, but of motorcycles. So I said no. I had to make do with what I had. I had to stay where I was,” said Agostini, who at that point was only at the beginning of his greatest career career that has ever been written in motorcycle Grand Prix racing and in which he was to win a total of 15 world championship titles in the 500cc, 350cc and 250cc classes between 1966 and 1975.
Agostini would have felt like he was betraying his true love if he started a new career in Formula 1. So he listened to his heart, but it was also a decision of reason.
Leaving the sport in which he had just reached the top would have been a risk he probably didn’t want to take. “Exactly,” he confirms. “Over there, I didn’t know what it would be like. Yes, I saw that I was good, but…”
Agostini assures that Enzo Ferrari accepted this decision without difficulty: “Yes. When I met him he appreciated it and said: ‘I understand you’. He understood that I was serious.”
Like Agostini, so did Rossi: F1 tested for Ferrari
It would be another ten years before Agostini finally got into automobile racing. Once his motorcycling career was over, he tried his hand at Formula 2 and then Formula Aurora AFX, a national championship for Formula 1 cars held in Great Britain.
In the Formula Aurora AFX, Agostini competed in more than 20 races with a Williams FW06 in 1979 and 1980. Although he didn’t win, he was on the podium seven times, so he had nothing to be ashamed of for his achievements behind the wheel.
But that wasn’t enough for Agostini. He had become accustomed to the top step of the podium. The 1980s finally led him to a new chapter in his motorcycle racing career, namely that of team owner.
For Ferrari, however, history repeated itself with the next big star of motorcycle racing: Valentino Rossi. The driver with starting number 46 was also courted to switch to Formula 1. Rossi completed several test drives, sometimes even sharing the track with Ferrari’s Formula 1 drivers, including Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. In a direct comparison, Rossi had to be anything but ashamed of his lap times.
But like Agostini before him, Rossi remained loyal to the motorcycle for a long time. “The Doctor” only seriously concentrated on his career on four wheels after his retirement from the motorcycle world championship. Today he drives endurance races, won the Le Mans Cup in the GT3 classification and also achieved his first victory in the GT World Challenge Europe (GTWC) in July of this year. In 2024, Rossi will drive the entire season of the World Endurance Championship (WEC), including the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time.