Luca Marini’s arrival at Honda for 2024 has not yet been made official, but the VR46 is already preparing to replace him. Alessio “Uccio” Salucci, director of the team founded by Valentino Rossi, confirmed that Marini “is negotiating” with Honda and is actively working on replacing him, ruling out the possibility of choosing Fabio Di Giannantonio.
“Unfortunately for Fabio, the first option is not Di Giannantonio,” he declared Uccio to the official MotoGP website. “We want a young rider who comes from Moto2, we already have two or three names. We will certainly make a decision in three or four days.”
Salucci confirmed that Fermin Aldeguer, winner of the last two races in Moto2, was an option. However, the Spaniard had already renewed with Boscoscuro for 2024 and there are penalties to pay to release him.
“When you lose a rider like Marini in November, you have to look at the Moto2 guys and it’s certain that there will be penalties. Let’s see what will happen. We discuss with several teams, not just one, not just Aldeguer. We will definitely have to pay something, but it is our world and we will see what happens in the next few days.”
Tony Arbolino joins Fabio Quartararo in MotoGP
Tony Arbolino, who is this year’s Moto2 world vice-champion, is another rider in contention for the VR46, but Uccio did not want to limit the list to just two riders: “I like Tony because he is strong, he is young and Italian. It’s certainly one of the names, but it’s not just him and Fermin. There are other very fast ones that I like. We’ll see in the next few days, not much longer.”
A quick conclusion to the matter becomes urgent, because it will be important for each team to have their driver ride in the Valencia tests scheduled in 11 days, just as the season ends. Carrying them out only with Marco Bezzecchi would be “an extreme possibility” that Uccio would like to avoid, and this is leading to intense discussions.
“I’ve only slept three hours in the last week! That’s how it is. Pablo Nieto (VR46 team manager ed), works tirelessly. The test is two days after Valencia, I hope our line-up will be defined by then. If this is not the case, we will have no choice but to carry out the test with just one driver. We’ll see, I hope to have two drivers, but we know that the timescales are very short”, he concludes Uccio.
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