Marco Simoncelli was one of the great promises of MotoGP, but in the 2011 Malaysian GP a serious accident took his life. At the time, he had strong possibilities of being in a factory team the following season.
The Italian was in Gresini – which was a satellite team of Honda – and signed two pre-contracts: one with the Japanese constructor, another with Ducati. This information has now been revealed by Carlo Pernat, who was his manager: ‘Before the unfortunate events in Malaysia, he already had two pre-contracts: one with Honda HRC, another with Ducati. So, we had to choose,’ he told Moto.it.
And what would be the choice? Pernat believes that Simoncelli would have opted for Honda due to the sports director at the time, Shuhei Nakamoto: ‘He probably would have stayed with HRC because he was Nakamoto’s protege – Nakamoto adopted him. But Ducati… we had two good proposals.’
