Aprilia MotoGP rider Lorenzo Savadori has undergone successful surgery to repair the break to his right ankle sustained in Sunday’s fireball crash at the Styrian Grand Prix.
The Italian is targeting a return to MotoGP action in three weeks’ time the British GP – but won’t be replaced by his team at this weekend’s Austrian GP, dashing fans’ hopes of seeing Andrea Dovizioso back in action.
Savadori underwent surgery on Monday afternoon at the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma, with Professor Francesco Pogliacomi and Doctors Luca Guardoli and Emanuele Ciccarone inserting metalwork into his right malleolus, the bony prominence at the top of the ankle joint. They were assisted by Doctor Michele Zasa, medical director of MotoGP’s Clinica Mobile.
In a brief statement, the Aprilia team confirmed that the operation was a success and that Savadori would be targeting a return to action at Silverstone later this month.
“The surgery has been perfectly successful, and the rider will start the recovery straight away, in order to come back racing as soon as possible,” the team confirmed.
Savadori was lucky to escape with only a single broken bone when he collided with Dani Pedrosa’s fallen KTM machine at the Red Bull Ring’s notorious Turn 3.
The impact collision caused a fuel tank split that created a fireball that brought out the red flags and resulted in an extensive delay to the restart of the race.
The severity of Savadori’s injury raises significant questions about MotoGP’s medical procedures, too, after he was passed fit to ride and to join the restarted race immediately afterwards, only for it to be later announced that he would instead need surgery to repair his fractured ankle.
Many fans had hoped that the silver lining to the situation would be that Aprilia test rider Dovizioso would finally return to MotoGP action for the first time since taking a sabbatical at the end of 2020.
But Aprilia also confirmed to The Race that that would not be the case, and that Aleix Espargaro would run as a one-man team for the Austrian GP.
Dovizioso’s future with Aprilia remains unclear heading forwards.
He was originally testing for the team with an eye to using it for a MotoGP racing comeback next season.
That option that looks to have been pulled out from beneath him by the imminent confirmation of Yamaha rider Maverick Vinales as Espargaro’s 2022 team-mate.
