The Italian contested his last MotoGP race last weekend at the Valencia Grand Prix after losing his place in the Tech3 and will contest the 2022 Dakar Rally with KTM.
This brought to an end a 10-year spell in MotoGP in which Danilo Petrucci went from being at the back of the grid in 2012 on the CRT Ioda to winning two races as a factory Ducati rider in 2019 and 2020.
With a background in series-derived motorcycle racing before coming to MotoGP, Petrucci’s journey to the grand prix was highly unconventional.
Reflecting on his time in the championship, Petrux believes he is likely to be the last rider to succeed in MotoGP without being seen as a special talent.
“The first time, at the end of 2011, someone told me that I was going to race in MotoGP next year, so my friends asked me: ‘Did you ever imagine racing in MotoGP?’ And I answered: ‘Yes, because it was always my dream.’ But it’s one thing to talk about it and another thing to do it,” Petrucci recalled.
“Honestly, when I started this adventure in 2012, I don’t remember if I was last, but I’m sure that in the first race I was the last and I also broke the bike. For many races I was the last in practice, the last in qualifying and the last in the race. And I think I was the only one who kept believing, I never gave up. One day the dream came true and it was very, very, very nice, because maybe I am one of the last normal people who do it without being a phenomenon “.
“When I was young I was just a good driver, I was fast but there were people faster than me.
Podium of Petrucci’s first victory in MotoGP, at Mugello 2019
“But I never stopped believing that I was the best, and twice I showed people in a race that I was the best at least on that circuit, that day.
” Mugello [2019] was maybe one day, but then I proved to myself at Le Mans [2020] that I could still win races.”
His former teammate in the Pramac team, Jack Miller, does not believe that any rider arrives in MotoGP as a phenomenon, with a few exceptions, and says that the effort Petrucci made to be competitive is for him proof that the Italian is “a legend”.
“The freaks I don’t think exist. Okay, maybe Pedro Acosta, or someone like that,” Miller said when asked about Petrucci’s comments. “But they are few and far between.”
“Danilo had a talent, and not just the talent; he was working on it. If you look at the photos of him on the Ioda, with his face like the moon, and then when he got on the Ducati, what he did to his body to be able to be competitive here, he worked at it. He’s a legend.”
(Click on the link or on the image to see the photos of Danilo Petrucci’s 2021 season in MotoGP)
