Danilo Petrucci’s return to factory Ducati colours at this weekend’s French Grand Prix is just the latest chapter in the Italian’s storied career with the manufacturer. But while he might have been a race winner the last time he rode a red bike at Le Mans, it’s considerably harder to see a fairytale ending to this particular tale, even with a favourable French weather forecast.
Petrucci steps into the factory seat of Enea Bastianini at Le Mans as his compatriot continues to recover from the shoulder injuries he sustained in the opening round of the season, with the current World Superbike racer getting the nod ahead of normal Ducati stand-in, test rider Michele Pirro, thanks to a clash with the domestic Italian championship.
It marks Petrucci’s first time on a MotoGP machine since October last year, where he made a one-off appearance for Suzuki in Thailand, replacing Joan Mir, and comes a year and a half since he left the grid permanently after an abortive 2021 season as part of KTM’s satellite outfit Tech3.
However, the path that took him to victory at Le Mans in 2020 (as well as a spectacular home win in Mugello in 2019) is one that’s dominated by his time with Ducati in particular.
Petrucci, who started out internationally in the European Superstock 600 class, had his first big success on board a Ducati in 2011 when he finished runner-up in the European Superstock 1000 Cup as well as winning the equivalent Italian championship – both while riding for the same Barni Racing team that he’s currently with in World Superbikes.
From there, he made a move to MotoGP that very much started at the back, riding an Ioda CRT machine for three seasons before getting the nod to step up to Ducati satellite team Pramac as the replacement for factory promotee Andrea Iannone.
Taking over from Iannone as Ducati’s now-traditional test-riding racer meant that he didn’t just get access to Ducati’s latest factory machinery, it also gave him a new role testing components destined for the red bikes further down the line.
Sprinkled with a healthy number of trips to the podium (six times in four seasons with Pramac), it set him up well as a replacement for Jorge Lorenzo at the factory team in 2019 – something that, to be fair, also came in part due to circumstance for the by-then MotoGP veteran.
Well familiar with Ducati’s development and direction of travel as well as a little more mature and established within the line-up than other potential Lorenzo replacements like Jack Miller and with up-and-coming names like eventual world champion Pecco Bagnaia still only just stepping up to the premier class, he was the no-brainer choice when the Ducati/Lorenzo relationship broke down.
Were the unexpected circumstances of Lorenzo’s departure to Honda to come about as little as a year later, by which point Miller had become a podium regular and (tantalisingly) the relative unknown of Fabio Quartararo had established himself as a talent, it’s far from as certain that it would have been Petrucci who was promoted to the red bike.
But it’s hard to argue that Petrucci didn’t perform, at least initially, in his factory role, either, taking a frankly amazing victory at home in Mugello that has to rank as one of the most popular wins the premier class has seen in recent years.
Petrucci’s first win had come in the dry but he has always been something of a wet-weather specialist thanks in large part due to his height and build.
His first MotoGP podium at Silverstone in 2015 had very nearly been a win, until a late charge from fellow Italian rain specialist Valentino Rossi denied him.
That specialty of Petrucci’s was never more evident than during a chaotic 2020 race at Le Mans, where he took his second MotoGP victory by keeping his cool in a damp track battle while multiple riders crash out and that year’s title rivals get stuck into an uninspiring battle for top-10 places.
However, Petrucci’s weight, such an asset in the wet, is something that worked against him his entire premier class career in dry weather. Forcing him into machinery set-up compromises and leaving him unable to use the Ducati the same way as much lighter team-mates such as Andrea Dovizioso, it meant that lacklustre results in dry conditions weren’t enough to convince Ducati to retain his services beyond his two-year deal.
What happened next at KTM was even worse, with a year that even now Petrucci isn’t exactly keen to talk about.
But while he might have been exiled from MotoGP at the end of 2021, it didn’t take too long for him to find his way back into Ducati’s ranks as he headed to MotoAmerica last year to fight for the domestic superbike crown.
Finishing second there and doing enough to earn himself a return to world championship racing in 2023, albeit in World Superbike on a satellite production bike, it’s that path that has led him directly back to his MotoGP return at Le Mans – and comes very much as a well-earned prize for one of the brand’s most loyal stalwarts.
The Race says
Valentin Khorounzhiy
It feels weird in hindsight but for a fair chunk of Lorenzo’s tenure as a works Ducati rider the idea of just swapping him out for Petrucci seemed to make very obvious on-paper sense – similar performance at a fraction of the price. Of course, when that swap did become definitive it was also when Lorenzo suddenly reached the heady heights of a Ducati stint most now agree was cut short way too soon – heights that Petrucci never did match.
Petrucci was maybe hard done by to only get an initial one-year deal (the offer was 1+1 but he turned it down to bet on himself) instead of a full two-year commitment – hardly the biggest show of faith – but he did earn the extension. Yet there are cold, hard, simple facts in why that deal didn’t roll on further. The statistics are almost brutal in how stark they are – nine top six-finishes in Petrucci’s first nine starts in works Ducati red, one (!) in the subsequent 24. A drastic, surreal loss of form exacerbated by the 2020 arrival of the new Michelin rear tyre that neither he, nor team-mate Dovizioso, could extract much from.
He could have no qualms about being dropped. But he could – and did – feel a certain sourness about how he was dropped. With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting, before a single racing lap was completed in 2020, Petrucci knew he’d be shown the door at the conclusion of the campaign.
Don’t take this as criticism of Ducati – it’s the reality of the business, and it wasn’t the only factory to make such a decision before any racing took place that year – but it was not the right note to kick off the final chapter of the Ducati/Petrucci MotoGP story. And a wretched run to 16th in the Portimao season finale – 34 seconds off the winner – was certainly no way to end it.
Whether he’s closer or further away at the finish at Le Mans, the reunion vibe and one-off status will make this a palette-cleanser of an epilogue.
