BBC MotoGP commentator, and former grand prix rider, Steve Parrish, believes
Valentino Rossi should leave motorcycle racing at the end of this season - preferably for the "virtually impossible" challenge of a
Formula One world title.
Rumours linking Rossi to a 2007
Ferrari F1 seat have increased exponentially since the seven times motorcycling world champion finished his first public F1 test, at Valencia in early February, within 0.711secs of 'team-mate'
Michael Schumacher and ahead of several F1 GP winners.
"No-one seems quite sure about the actual spec car he was driving - I know he was ninth or tenth fastest - but some have said 'ah his 2004 spec car was much faster'," Parrish told
Crash.net Radio, when asked for his thoughts on the test. "I don't really know about that, but I do know Valentino Rossi is an exception - in a vehicle, on a vehicle or around anything to do with a vehicle.
"Rossi's very very talented, he's able to absorb more information than anybody I've ever come across in the past and I think he can make the transition (to F1) - given the time - and it'll need a team that will be able to underwrite maybe six months worth of testing to see if he can do that. But if anybody in our two-wheeled sport can make the transition, then Valentino can."
Parrish, who took a best finish of third during a 500cc career that lasted from 1977-1985, then added that a Ferrari and Rossi partnership would be "a marriage made in heaven" and that Valentino has already proved he can "cut the mustard" in
F1.
"I think they be silly not to be," declared the Briton, when asked he if thought the decision to let Rossi test at Valencia test proved that Ferrari are serious about Rossi. "It'd be a marriage made in heaven wouldn't it? An Italian superstar, that already gets column inches by the yard, in a Ferrari!
