{"id":664329,"date":"2026-05-11T18:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T18:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/664329\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T18:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T18:01:12","slug":"motogp-legend-valentino-rossis-first-race-winning-bike-up-for-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/664329\/","title":{"rendered":"MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi&#8217;s first race-winning bike up for auction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Aprilia is dominating MotoGP at present with Marco Bezzecchi leading the 2026 riders\u2019 standings after five rounds, but it was Bezzecchi\u2019s mentor, Valentino Rossi, who made history with the Noale factory 30 years ago.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">1996 was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1999\/valentino-rossi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rossi<\/a>\u2019s first year in the 125cc World Championship, the Italian winning memorably at Brno in his rookie year.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">By 2009, of course, Rossi would\u2019ve racked up nine world titles, including two with Aprilia \u2013 in the 125cc class in 1997, then in the 250cc class in 1999 before he made the move to the 500cc category and HRC in 2000.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The strength of Rossi\u2019s legacy in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MotoGP<\/a> make all of his bikes iconic to some extent, especially those from the early days, and the days don\u2019t get earlier than year one.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">So, it\u2019s no surprise that the AGV-sponsored Aprilia RS125R Rossi rode in 1996 is expected to fetch a fairly hefty price when it\u2019s auctioned by RM Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Bidding is due to open later this week on 13 May. There is no reserve price on the bike, but it is estimated to go for between \u20ac100,000 (\u00a385,000) and \u20ac150,000 (\u00a3130,000).<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">After the 1996 season, the bike was sold to a private owner in January 1997. It was sold on again in 2013, since when the ownership of the bike has not changed.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">RM Sotheby\u2019s says that the bike also comes with \u201cfascinating factory team sheets that verify each of this bike\u2019s race entries to the 1996 season\u201d. Those race entries include Rossi\u2019s world championship debut at Shah Alam, his first podium in Austria, and that maiden win in Czechia, the engine from which is the one still fitted in the bike now, according to the aforementioned team sheets.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Rossi ended the 1996 season ninth in the riders\u2019 standings. He wouldn\u2019t finish so low in the standings again until 2020 when he scored one podium en route to 15th in that year\u2019s condensed season, which proved to be his last with the factory Yamaha team and his penultimate year of world championship motorcycle racing.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aprilia is dominating MotoGP at present with Marco Bezzecchi leading the 2026 riders\u2019 standings after five rounds, but&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[18009,64,63,806,805,803,804,85,20420],"class_list":["post-664329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-aprilia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports","tag-valentino-rossi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}