French GP sets stage for a welcome MotoGP epilogue

Danilo Petrucci’s return to factory Ducati colours at this weekend’s French Grand Prix is just the latest chapter in the Italian’s storied career with the manufacturer. But while he might have been a race winner the last time he rode a red bike at Le Mans, it’s considerably harder to see a fairytale ending to this particular tale, even with a favourable French weather forecast.

Petrucci steps into the factory seat of Enea Bastianini at Le Mans as his compatriot continues to recover from the shoulder injuries he sustained in the opening round of the season, with the current World Superbike racer getting the nod ahead of normal Ducati stand-in, test rider Michele Pirro, thanks to a clash with the domestic Italian championship.

It marks Petrucci’s first time on a MotoGP machine since October last year, where he made a one-off appearance for Suzuki in Thailand, replacing Joan Mir, and comes a year and a half since he left the grid permanently after an abortive 2021 season as part of KTM’s satellite outfit Tech3.

However, the path that took him to victory at Le Mans in 2020 (as well as a spectacular home win in Mugello in 2019) is one that’s dominated by his time with Ducati in particular.

Petrucci, who started out internationally in the European Superstock 600 class, had his first big success on board a Ducati in 2011 when he finished runner-up in the European Superstock 1000 Cup as well as winning the equivalent Italian championship – both while riding for the same Barni Racing team that he’s currently with in World Superbikes.

From there, he made a move to MotoGP that very much started at the back, riding an Ioda CRT machine for three seasons before getting the nod to step up to Ducati satellite team Pramac as the replacement for factory promotee Andrea Iannone.

Taking over from Iannone as Ducati’s now-traditional test-riding racer meant that he didn’t just get access to Ducati’s latest factory machinery, it also gave him a new role testing components destined for the red bikes further down the line.

Sprinkled with a healthy number of trips to the podium (six times in four seasons with Pramac), it set him up well as a replacement for Jorge Lorenzo at the factory team in 2019 – something that, to be fair, also came in part due to circumstance for the by-then MotoGP veteran.

Well familiar with Ducati’s development and direction of travel as well as a little more mature and established within the line-up than other potential Lorenzo replacements like Jack Miller and with up-and-coming names like eventual world champion Pecco Bagnaia still only just stepping up to the premier class, he was the no-brainer choice when the Ducati/Lorenzo relationship broke down.

Were the unexpected circumstances of Lorenzo’s departure to Honda to come about as little as a year later, by which point Miller had become a podium regular and (tantalisingly) the relative unknown of Fabio Quartararo had established himself as a…