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All that is missing now is the official announcement, but it is certain as we wrote last Friday that Andrea Iannone will race in Sepang on theVR46 team Ducati of Fabio Di Giannantonio, who will return to Italy to undergo shoulder surgery after the Thai GP. After the announcement of the Rome rider's forced stop, speculation had been rife about possible candidates, and there were at least four in the mix.
Clearly, the first choice would have been Michele Pirro, but the test rider is busy these weeks testing the Desmosedici 2025, which Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez will try out at Valencia after the last race of the year. Another option was Danilo Petrucci, who had offered himself as a replacement. Petrux had stepped onto Borgo Panigale's MotoGP bike last year at Le Mans, replacing the injured Bastianini. Also on the shortlist of names was the most daring possibility, that of "giving" Bulega a weekend in the premier class. Nicolò, however, has never ridden a MotoGP bike before and it would have been too risky to catapult him into the premier class without the proper preparation. The Aruba rider had an outstanding debut season in SBK and that prize could have turned out to be a double-edged sword, with more to lose than gain.
Nor will it be easy for Iannone to throw himself back into the MotoGP fray after a five-year absence, and he will do so in Malaysia, the track where he raced his last MotoGP race before his doping disqualification. That affair is now behind him, Andrea has begun his second racing life in SBK with the Go Eleven team, but it is hard to resist the temptation to return to his old home, if only for a weekend.
In these five years of absence, MotoGP has changed a lot. There is now sprint racing, but more importantly, the bikes have evolved. The lowering device, for example, is a system that Iannone has never used and is just the tip of the iceberg of increasingly evolved and complicated bikes.
Ideally, a test would have been organized so that he could get used to the GP23 he will ride, but unfortunately time is tight and there is no possibility of doing that. So Andrea will get to know the bike directly on race weekend, in the first practice session of the Malaysian GP.
From the media point of view, his hiring is definitely the right choice. Andrea is not only a very fast rider, but also one of those characters who can enter the hearts of fans and sometimes even divide them. His results don't matter, he will definitely be in the spotlight. And in Ducati, those who know him well say that if there is a rider capable of causing a surprise, it is Iannone. Either way, it's already a success.
