Marco Simoncelli was one of the MotoGP’s promising talents, but tragically, his life was cut short during the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix due to a severe accident. At that time, he had strong possibilities of joining a factory team for the following season.
The Italian rider was with Gresini, then a satellite team of Honda, and had signed two pre-contracts: one with the Japanese manufacturer and another with Ducati. This information was recently revealed by Carlo Pernat, who was his manager: ‘Before the tragic events in Malaysia, he already had two pre-contracts: one with Honda HRC and another with Ducati. […]. So, we had to choose’, he told Moto.it.
And what would have been the choice? Pernat believes that Simoncelli would have chosen Honda due to the team’s former sporting director, Shuhei Nakamoto: ‘He probably would have stayed with HRC because he was a protégé of Nakamoto – Nakamoto had taken him under his wing. But Ducati… we had two good proposals’.