Between Misano and this weekend’s Portimao MotoGP round, Danilo Petrucci squeezed in a special trip to Dubai for a Dakar training session in the sand dunes.
An off-road fanatic, there is still much for Petrucci to learn ahead of the unique event, most notably navigation. And sand dunes.
“We always had dinner together. They always shared advice. All the other 7 riders of the KTM group are really nice with me. We spent almost all the week together. I was asking them a lot of things. They also asked me a lot, but just out of curiosity about MotoGP bikes.
“Racing road bikes is the thing I know the most,” he said. “The Dakar is really exciting for me. But at the moment I’m not absolutely competitive. It’s like starting everything from zero. I never did a rally in my life. I don’t know if I will like.
“The one thing I care about the most is the danger. You can risk your life and career every metre there. To be really fast, you have to know many things. You can’t trust the dunes, the desert, and the high speed. Those bikes reach almost 200km/h. So they are fast, and the stones and the rocks are really hard.”
Petrucci also commented on recent rumours he might head back to asphalt after the Dakar by riding for Ducati in the MotoAmerica series.
“Regarding MotoAmerica, the only thing I will do for sure is the Dakar,” Petrucci said. “Then after that I will decide if it’s good to continue doing it for a pair of years. If I like it, if it’s not so dangerous, I will talk with KTM and we will find a way. If I think we can be competitive together doing this thing.
“I don’t have any news regarding that side but I think it was just a rumour circulating too fast in Misano.
“After the Dakar I will decide if I can take the opportunity to race again with the road racing. At the moment I’m not doing the Dakar to spend three weeks in the desert. I want to understand if I enjoy and if with proper training, preparation I can be competitive in the next three or four years.”
Turning to this weekend’s Portimao event, Petrucci expects much to change from April’s appearance, when he was 13th in what was then his third race on the RC16.
“We have a different hard front tyre but we don’t know if we are able to use it for the weather,” he said. “In April we wouldn’t have needed that tyre. Now we don’t know if it’s possible to use it.
“Now there are also some riders in better shape, others in worse, so it will be different. Like coming here like starting from zero.
“I’d like to enjoy these [last two] races. When you are racing in MotoGP you’d like to be really fast. When you struggle it isn’t so fun.
“You need 100% effort to ride this bike so you can’t think too much about enjoyment. But I will try to not scream an get angry with myself in the box in these last two weekends!”
