Valentino Rossi was not the first: the revelation of Giacomo Agostini

Multiple motorcycle world champion Giacomo Agostini: “Enzo Ferrari made me a proposal, I didn’t sleep for three nights.”

Multiple motorcycle world champion Giacomo Agostini in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport revealed a backstory about Ferrari’s approach to him, very similar to the one Valentino Rossi had with the Maranello stable years later.

“I often went to test at the Modena racetrack, where the Maranello team also ran, and Enzo Ferrari was always there. He would come serious to the pit, stay twenty or thirty minutes, then go to the office. One day he asked me to test the car and then, after he had turned, he told me to let him know if I wanted to continue.”

After days of doubt, Agostini, just like Valentino Rossi years later, declined the offer: “I didn’t sleep for three nights, thinking about that proposal that opened fantastic prospects, but I couldn’t betray motorcycles, the great love I was born with.”