Marco Melandri was a notable rider during the early years of the MotoGP era. He debuted in the premier class in 2003 with Yamaha’s factory team before moving to Tech3 the following year to make room for Valentino Rossi.
In an interview with Relevo, Melandri acknowledged the significant disparity between factory and satellite teams at that time, particularly regarding the quality of the bikes: ‘The factory team is the reference point, where you can work on developing and improving the bike. In my case, I didn’t even feel like I was in the factory team in 2003 because they were working for 2004. Regarding the satellite team… in the first race in South Africa, I had one bike with a «big bang» engine and another with a «screamer» engine. It wasn’t like today, where you have seven engines for the season. Back then, it was open: I received Valentino’s and Carlos [Checa]‘s used engines, already with many kilometers on them. Yes, we had a much inferior bike. That’s objective’.
At that time, electronics were just being introduced, and Melandri noted the differences in this area as well: ‘I’ll tell you more. Today, you take a satellite Ducati, and it has its own electronic engineer. Back then, it wasn’t like that because it was the beginning of electronics. The telemetry technicians tried to be engineers. There wasn’t the same level of training’.
When asked if winning with a satellite team was more challenging back then, the Italian confirmed: ‘Yes, especially in the first two years because everything was new. Only the factory team could give you that advantage. Also in terms of software and electronics… however, the satellite team had to figure everything out from scratch. They didn’t just have data’.