MotoGP | Nadia Padovani: “Never imagined having 10 titles in the box!”

The start of the 2024 season is now around the corner and, the closer the time to get on track gets, the more the pulse rises for what could be the most interesting championship in recent years. It will certainly be the most historic year for recent MotoGP, but above all for the Gresini team: on Saturday, in fact, the Faenza team officially presented its stellar line up, made up of Alex Marquez and the eight-time world champion , Marc Marquez.

Yes, eight times world champion. Eight world titles, eight times on the roof of the world. A fact that is reiterated at Gresini, because two years ago, when the team triumphed in Lusail against all expectations, no one in that garage would have ever expected to have the most successful driver of recent years.

Yet that moment has arrived and, between Marc and Alex, the total of world championships is ten, with the two won by the younger of the Marquez brothers. To celebrate such an incredible milestone, which is nothing more than a starting point, Gresini has chosen a particular location to unveil its Ducatis, the Cocoricò, a historic nightclub on the Romagna Riviera. “We chose Cocoricò because it is a historic venue in Romagna, I used to come here to dance when I was twenty!”, says a smiling Nadia Padovani, who has been the point of reference for the Gresini team for three years now.

A growing path, that of the Gresini team, led by a woman who has taken up the baton of the unforgettable Fausto. Nadia continues to make her husband's memory alive, realizing her plans and making them big. But she and her team would never have imagined opening the garage doors to one of the greatest drivers in history.

“This is a fantastic year,” declared Nadia Padovani at the presentation event of the Gresini team. “We have already won as a team, because it is an independent team with an eight-time world champion. In our team we will have ten world titles, so this is crazy for us! We never imagined we would get to do something so important in our history.”

Nadia goes back in time, retraces the events of a few months ago. That excited period in which it was not known what Marc's future was, who would occupy the place in the garage of the Faenza team. There were many rumors chasing each other, but Gresini knew what to do: wait for Marquez's decision and become the place of the champion's rebirth.

Photo by: Gresini Racing

Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing, Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing

“We were contacted, I spoke to the guys on my team. Marc had a contract with Honda for 2024, so it wasn't a given that they would let him go. We decided to wait for it, in fact we arrived in October! We strongly held this line and brought him here”, says Nadia Padovani.

The bikes have been revealed, the riders have been presented and now everything is really ready to start again. In February we leave for Malaysia, where the pre-season tests will take place and will begin to provide some answers. More pressure or more desire to start again? Nadia Padovani has no doubts: “The desire to start overcomes the pressure, because we can't wait to get on track with these riders. We can't wait to see where we can go this year.”