Motorsport: Schumacher tries out Ducati bike

ROME - Ferrari's Michael Schumacher spent a day in Valentino Rossi's world when he tested a MotoGP bike for the first time at the Mugello circuit.

After MotoGP champion Rossi's recent tests in a Ferrari Formula One car, Schumacher tried out a Ducati similar to the one used by Italy's Loris Capirossi to win back-to-back races in Japan and Malaysia earlier this year.

The seven times world champion opened the session gently, lapping the Italian MotoGP circuit at around two minutes and 40 seconds.

By the end he was almost 30 seconds faster but still nowhere near the record of one minute 49.223 seconds held by Yamaha's Rossi, who has already clinched a fifth successive title this season.

"It was just for fun," said a Ferrari spokesman.

Ducati are based in Bologna, near Ferrari's Maranello factory, and share the same title sponsor as the Italian Formula One team as well as the same tyre and fuel partners.

"I'd been looking forward to this for a long time," commented Schumacher. "It was worth it, super fun."

Rossi has tested twice for Ferrari, in April 2004 and more seriously in August this year, and the former champions have expressed an interest in luring him to Formula One when he tires of MotoGP.

Schumacher, who will be 37 in January, is already the oldest active Formula One driver and has said he will see out his career at Ferrari.

The German won just one race last season, the six-car US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, and finished a distant third in a drivers' championship won by Renault's 24-year-old Spaniard Fernando Alonso.

While Schumacher was having fun on two wheels, Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello said farewell to Ferrari by taking his family and friends for rides in a Ferrari three-seater Formula One car.

Barrichello is joining BAR next year.

- REUTERS