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The rumor surfaced at the Jerez Superbike weekend, and so we started pressing him on the subject with all the right questions. Andrea Iannone turned a deaf ear, even going so far as to show us the call history of his own phone in order to deny the news: "You say I'm racing at Sepang, that Valentino Rossi wants me, but my phone doesn't ring." So we jokingly replied to him, "You have to turn the mute off, so maybe you can hear the ringer."
Given the situation in the making, we could well understand that The Maniac did not want to get out of line on the subject, maintaining the utmost confidentiality.
The fact remains that after five years of waiting, Andrea Iannone will return to racing in MotoGP. He will do so at Sepang, where he will replace Fabio Di Giannantonio riding the Ducati of the Pertamina VR46 team. Valentino Rossi, in agreement with Gigi Dall'Igna, wanted to see him riding his GP23, and The Maniac certainly could not back down from such an invitation.
For Andrea it will be a kind of poker in the dark, because he will be riding a MotoGP bike, which is nothing like the ones he was used to in the past. Irrespective of the challenge that awaits him, where he will be called to a real race against time to understand the bike, the tires and the track, this return to MotoGP certainly has a special value for the #29. The last image of him on a MotoGP was in fact in Valencia 2019, then the 4-year stop for doping.
Four years that no one can give him back and only he knows the burden of what he had to endure. Yet Andrea has never wanted to give up one thing, and that is being a rider. While as he was telling us last August in this interview, "My time in MotoGP was up," Superbike offered him a second chance to start again. In this second life of his in which Andrea gathered the answers he was looking for: the first, that is, to be a racer, the second to return to winning.
To close the circle, however, there was one piece missing, namely the last step toward that redemption that Andrea has been chasing so much in recent years: getting back on the saddle of his beloved MotoGP bike. He will do it this weekend, finding that paddock from which he had taken leave too soon without being able to do it the way he would have liked. And who cares if the standings will most likely see his name appear at the bottom of the results sheet. This time, more than the stopwatch, all that matters is being there, wearing a racesuit and helmet and not as a mere guest as happened on the last occasions.
You can forget about Desaparecido, Andrea is back, this time for real: Redeemed!
