VR46 team boss Pablo Nieto has exclusively explained to The Race what structure the squad’s move into the premier class with Luca Marini will use next year, laying out the plans for Valentino Rossi’s first foray into MotoGP team management with his half-brother.
Details about the exact make-up of the hybrid team next season were not exactly clear when it was announced on Saturday that VR46 would graduate to MotoGP in partnership with Ducati’s satellite team Esponsorama.
And Rossi’s veteran team boss Nieto admitted the that lack of clarity was partly because the exact details are still to be formalised.
“Everything I see I like, and I don’t think there will be any problems. It will be an easy team to work with” :: Pablo Nieto
Marini join fellow Italian and 2020 Moto2 title contender Enea Bastianini in the squad but on two different-looking motorcycles, in an arrangement similar to the two colour schemes currently run by LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow and Taka Nakagami.
While Nieto will take on some of the team management duties in MotoGP alongside current Esponsorama team boss Ruben Xaus (while still retaining his VR46 Moto2 responsibilities too) he says exact titles haven’t been discussed just yet.
Marini will bring crew members from VR46 with him to work on his MotoGP bike.
“It’s a little bit complicated but in the end it’s quite easy,” Nieto told The Race.
“We will have one bike in the Esponsorama team with Luca Marini, with the colour scheme the same as this year, more or less.
“Then we will have two riders in Moto2 with Marco [Bezzecchi] and Celestino [Vietti]. That’ll be the entire VR46 project for 2021.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t have the right words yet to say that I am the sporting director or the manager.
“We will make something together with Ruben and I, and we will be more or less at the same level, and in Moto2 I will be like the team manager as normal.”
Given the experience that Xaus and team owner Raul Romero have in running a Ducati MotoGP squad – and given the excellent job they’ve done with Johann Zarco in particular this season – Nieto says he’s in no hurry to take over.
“In MotoGP we are arriving to a team that is already there and know better than us how things work, so I will be there but it will be Raul and Ruben’s team,” he explained.
“It looks at the moment that everything I see I like, and I don’t think there will be any problems. It will be an easy team to work with.
“It should be the same bike that Zarco has now. With the agreement for 2021 you can’t have new bikes, so we will continue with the same bikes. Right now it looks like Tito Rabat and Zarco have different bikes, but for 2021 they will all be the same.”
Nieto also admitted that pulling together the project in the space of only a few short weeks (and while team boss Valentino Rossi has been laid up with coronavirus) hasn’t been easy – and that VR46 hasn’t even started to consider its 2022 plans just yet, despite rumours of a two-bike team running Suzuki machinery.
“It was difficult to prepare everything,” Nieto said.
“Normally when you start working on this project, it should be a little easier.
“We had to talk with Dorna, with the team, with Ducati – always you have to wait for three answers and it has made things happen slowly. It was the biggest problem – to manage everything together.
“At the moment we’ve just closed this project. We don’t have all of next season to think about 2022 because if we wait all year it will be too late, but we have some more time to think about it.”
