Petrucci will move on at the end of the campaign, bringing the curtains down on a 10-season MotoGP career.Īnybody who’s toughed it out for this long as MotoGP transformed into what it is now deserves massive credit, and the championship will certainly miss the affable, straight-talking Italian. There is no big revelation in saying MotoGP has become closer, but it’s still something that catches you off-guard from time to time – like when you realise that Petrucci is in a similar position results-wise now on a really decent RC16 as when he was racing Iodas and Suters in his rookie season. This year, that same average gap is 47s for the whole field, even though that’s a lot more bikes included. If you take only the ‘Prototype’ entries from 2012 – the main class, with 12 full-time riders, four each in the Honda, Yamaha and Ducati camps – and pick out the last lead-lap finisher in each race, you get a 1m05s average gap to the front. But it still helps to put into perspective the genuinely absurd leap MotoGP has taken in shoring up the back of its grid. CRT did its job and then shuffled off the grid. His average gaps to the front for the races where he took the chequered flag on the lead lap are, respectively, 1m19.522s nine years ago and 27.702s this year. This year, Petrucci finished within half a minute of the winner in nine races, and was never more than 50 seconds off.
This season, he currently sits 19th in the standings, ahead of three riders falling under the above criteria – Luca Marini, Valentino Rossi and Lorenzo Savadori.Įxcept, well, a Tech3-run KTM is no Ioda TR003. In 2012, he finished 19th in the standings, ahead of three riders who were either likewise full-time or close to it – Colin Edwards, Mattia Pasini and Ivan Silva. In overall championship terms, however, Petrucci’s situation really is comparable to what it is now. This made the team more competitive in CRT terms, but it was still not a very glamorous situation. His initial races came on an Aprilia-engined Ioda TR003 (pictured below), a curiosity that was swapped mid-season for a Suter chassis and BMW power. The rags-to-riches trajectory of Petrucci’s rise to being an eventual Ducati MotoGP race winner is well documented, but the part that concerns us is the MotoGP debut itself – Petrucci transitioned from being Superstock 1000 runner-up to an Ioda rider in MotoGP’s CRT category, the sub-class in the premier-class.
#Came ioda racing full#
But while Petrucci has indeed come full circle in a sense, it’s also very clear that he hasn’t really.
“I think that life is a cycle because I start MotoGP in 2012 being last in practice, last in qualifying and last in the race, and now after 10 years I come back in that position,” Petrucci wisecracked.
#Came ioda racing cracked#
And a joke he’d cracked the day prior, after qualifying in last place, was indirectly enlightening.
Regardless, it’s notable just how tough Petrucci – a two-time MotoGP race winner with what is clearly an outstanding amount of talent – has found the going in 2021. His primary explanation for that has been a lack of experience of the KTM RC16 and the struggles of adapting the bike for his size, which certainly is above average for MotoGP. Though COTA and Red Bull Ring were nadirs, it’s true that usually Petrucci’s been closer to the back of the timesheets than the front this year. It is his second-worst gap to the finish of the season so far – only the Styrian GP was worse, and then only because Petrucci went off-track and lost a huge haul of time after fighting for a consolation point in the very end. Petrucci brought the KTM home in the penultimate 18th place, having ended the race with a deficit of 42.239s to the winner – an average of two seconds per lap.
0 kommentar(er)
