The Gresini Racing team has confirmed that it will become an independent Ducati MotoGP team for 2022, with reigning Moto2 world champion Enea Bastianini being joined by the squad’s current middleweight race winner Fabio Di Giannantonio for a new chapter in the venerable team’s history.
The news was widely expected in the past weeks, but will nonetheless come as a blow to Gresini’s current partner Aprilia, who had hoped to retain a link with the outfit when Gresini announced it was planning to once again field its own independent team after seven seasons running Aprilia’s factory effort.
The team is to be sponsored by Italian shipping container company Flex-Box, a long-time MotoGP partner with a number of teams.
Team principal Nadia Padovani, the widow of the late team founder Fausto Gresini, says it’s to carry on his legacy that the plans are coming to fruition now.
“It’s a very emotional moment for each of us,” she said. “In previous months, our efforts merged with a strong emotional push to shape the future of Gresini Racing, and now are immensely proud and happy to make the official announcement. It is a project born out of continuity and based on values upon which Fausto built this amazing institution.
“My thank you goes first and foremost to Carmelo Ezpeleta [chief of MotoGP promoter Dorna] for making sure we never felt alone during these months, to Ducati for trusting our projects, to Flex-Box who joined us in this new challenge as title sponsor and obviously to Fabio and Enea [pictured below]: I’m sure they will give their best to wave the Gresini Racing banner high.”
Ducati Corse boss Gigi Dall’Igna said the original negotiations over the deal stretch to as far back as last year.
“We’re incredibly happy to have reached this agreement with Gresini Racing for the next two MotoGP seasons,” Dall’Igna said. “We had laid down the foundations of a possible agreement with Fausto already at the end of last year and we would like to thank – from the bottom of our hearts – his family for carrying this project forward with us.
“Gresini Racing has been an especially important institution in MotoGP for many years and we are confident this partnership, which can count on two very talented riders such as Enea and Fabio, will be of great satisfaction for all parties involved.”
The announcement means that one third of next year’s expanded 24-bike grid will now be on Ducati machinery, with the factory team joined by Pramac Racing, Gresini and the to-be-announced deal with Valentino Rossi’s VR46 outfit.
It’s something of a spanner in the works for series promoter Dorna’s ambitions to see a grid of four bikes from each of MotoGP’s six manufacturers – a plan that fell apart when Suzuki once again abstained from committing to satellite machinery and Aprilia was unable to find a partner.
