MotoGP superstar 🅺Valentino Rossi has confirmed that he will use a Ford Focus RS WRC𝄹 car on December's season ending Wales Rally GB.

The Italian, ဣwho won the MotoGP title for the sixth time this year, was forced to abandon🎃 a planned Rally GB return one year ago in order to undertake a test session with new tyre supplier Bridgestone.

This season though he has managed to fit the event in around his busy programme with Fiat Yamaha - although he concedes that it is going to be quite hectic over the next month or so, with the final MotoGP♛ event of '08 this weekend in Valencia, followed by tests on Monday and Tuesday and more possibly in November, prior to the MotoGP test ban, which runs from December 1 to January 15.

"During the winter ꧋I will do, for sure, the RAC Rally in England on the weekend of December 7," he said on Thursday. "I will race with Ford. I also have some tests on the gravel with the WRC, so I have a tight schedul♍e until December."

His ꦯoutin🌳g in Wales will be his third in the World Rally Championship, and while his first with a Michelin-backed Peugeot 206 WRC on the 2002 Rally GB didn't go well - he crashed out just 17 kilometres in, a run in New Zealand four years later was much more successful.

Indeed the seven-time world champion steered a Subaru Impreza WRC from 24th, to 13th and then 11th over the three days, setting a best stage time of seventh i🍸n the process.

"I love to race with the rally car. It is one of my great passions. Unfortunately for me the only time during the yeaཧr [whenಌ I can take part] is November and December. But I am always quite excited because I always have fun with the car and there is less pressure than when I ride the motorcycle. I'll take a rest in December," he added.

Rossi meanwhile will warm-up for the Wales Rally GB by doing🐠 the t𝔉armac-based Monza Rally in November, an event incidentally that he won last year in a Pirelli-shod Ford Focus.