As known, Marco Bezzecchi had the opportunity to join Prima Pramac for the 2024 MotoGP season, where he would have a Ducati Desmosedici GP24 equivalent to the factory team’s bikes. However, he chose to stay with Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team, even knowing that the equipment would not be as up-to-date.
A somewhat surprising decision, as he opted to stay put instead of taking another small step in his career. The Italian explained to SPEEDWEEK.com: ‘It was a difficult decision because Ducati offered me a factory bike. I don’t know if it would have been a full factory bike or an intermediate step, but for me, it had to do with the fact that nowadays in MotoGP, you have to perform very quickly. […]. I knew that the human side was very important to me, and I had to build this relationship with my team. When you know you have to perform very quickly – having that pressure when you change teams, not knowing if I would feel the same way, if I would build the same relationship and maintain the same way of working as with my current crew chief, because I probably wouldn’t have been able to bring Matteo [Flamigni] with me… . You just need that feeling’.
Furthermore, Bezzecchi emphasized that he wouldn’t really be moving to a factory team, which is the goal of progression, choosing instead to remain loyal to VR46, which has supported him since early in his career: ‘In the end, I said to myself, «Why should I change from one customer team to another customer team?». My goal, like all MotoGP riders, is to join a factory team. The VR46 Riders Academy has been working since my debut in Moto3 to build me for a factory team. They have done so much for me, why should I leave them to go to another satellite team?’.
Despite not denying that he would like to have a factory setup with VR46, #72 highlighted that he also knows the value of the equipment he has: ‘Of course, a factory bike, a factory package, is very interesting, and I would have loved to have it in this team too, but in the end, I know that even with a package that is a year old, I can get very good results because the Ducati package is very competitive’.