Petrux Rocks

Italian Danilo Petrucci is fast in the rain, best mates with Valentino Rossi and one of the happiest, friendliest riders on the MotoGP grid. Time to get to know him a bit better

- Mat Oxley

ANILO PETRUCCIISN’T YOUR average MotoGP rider. In fact, he is unique. Whereas every MotoGP rider comes from 250s or Moto2, like Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, or from winning in World Superbike, like Cal Crutchlow, Eugene Laverty and Loris Baz, Petrucci comes from somewhere completely different. He didn’t even graduate to MotoGP from a world championship, but instead from the Europe-only Superstock series. So he’s a bit like a Second Division footballer who finds himself living the Premiership dream.

And how. A podium finish in last year’s rain-lashed British GP and a potential winner at Assen a few weeks ago, Petrucci has gained a reputation for shaking up the status quo, especially when it’s raining. And even when it’s not. A couple of years ago at the season-opening Qatar GP, Petrucci stood out from the crowd in the class-of-2014 photo shoot. Among all the riders’ baseball caps selling everything from fizzy energy drink to, er, fizzy energy drink, was a cap bearing the legend LOVE. It sat atop Petrucci’s frizzy mop of black hair.

The significance of that sentiment in a sport which is all about fighting, battling and stitching each other up had half the paddock wondering what Petrucci had been smoking. What they didn’t know was that the cap was telling us that he was ready to quit the cruel world of racing.

“That was a strange period of my life, like you see in the career of an artist,” says the 25-year-old, his bushy black eyebrows arching above his smile. “Five days before the first pre-season tests Giampierro Sacchi [owner of the Ioda MotoGP team] calls me and says, ‘We can’t go testing; we have no money’. I was completely destroyed, so I say to myself I must quit racing. I wore the LOVE cap at the first few races because I didn’t want to be angry with anyone in paddock. The cap said peace and love to everyone.”