Petrucci: "I felt more pressure in the Dakar than in MotoGP"

It’s 10 am on a Thursday when Motorsport.com chats with a Danilo Petrucci who shows no sign of the fatigue you might expect from a human being after two hellish weeks racing your first Dakar in the Saudi Arabian desert.

Even through the soulless eye of a Zoom camera, Petrucci managed to fill the living room of the person who writes these lines with boundless enthusiasm and with a lot of laughter while recounting what he called “one of the most beautiful experiences of my life “.

While most of us spent the last few moments between 2021 and 2022 enjoying the holiday season and recovering from a hangover, Petrucci ended his glorious career in MotoGP and was preparing for a radical change: he was ready to take on the Dakar with KTM (with which he raced in MotoGP in 2021) on a 450 Rally Tech 3-liveried.

But if you thought that planning the Christmas visits to the in-laws was stressful, we tell you about Petrucci’s winter. In December he broke his ankle while training on his Dakar motorcycle in Dubai. There and then his rally debut seemed to be over, because, as he said, “the doctor told me not to go racing”. But some medical advice while he was at home and a good staff around him kept his dream of racing the Dakar alive.

When he arrived in Saudi Arabia the week before the rally, Petrucci underwent a PCR test before doing a shakedown on his KTM. The swab was positive, and once again, his Dakar dream seemed shattered. This is when doubts started creeping into his mind.

“I arrived, did the PCR and then I went to test the bike, because I hadn’t been riding for 20 days. I walked around and when I came back they told me I was positive for Covid. It was as if someone wanted to try and tell me that I shouldn’t do this race. So I went into solitary confinement. The next day I did another PCR, then another the next day, which was the last day before the start of the Dakar, but fortunately it was negative ”.

That negative result returned in the early hours of December 31st, which is the day before the rally started. The preparations were not all negative, however: “For safety reasons I was isolated, in fact I slept for four or five days in a tent and it was beautiful, because I had never done it before, especially in the middle of the desert. Night was coming and we didn’t know where we were, there were no lights, there was no noise, nothing around me and it was really cool to see all the stars at night. The day after my Dakar began ”.

# 90 Tech 3 KTM Factory Racing: Danilo Petrucci

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Petrucci’s move to the Dakar – which he first revealed to Motorsport.com in June 2021 – was met with some skepticism, due to concern for the Italian. Since 1979, as many as 76 competitors have died competing in the event, 23 of whom were on two wheels. Some of the more experienced Dakar drivers felt that Petrucci’s debut in the rally raid should have taken place more smoothly. “The more experienced guys, especially the ones who have won, say, ‘Ok, that’s cool, but you have to go on a tour with your friends, because you have no experience in the desert, it’s really, really hard and most of all it’s dangerous,” he noted. Petrucci.

That advice was not heeded, but not out of arrogance or swagger. Off-roading is part of a MotoGP rider’s training regimen and for the most part they are all quite skilled. For Petrucci, off-roading is something he literally grew up and trained with. Its height of just under one meter and eighty and its weight of 80 kg (about 15-20 kg more than the rest of the MotoGP grid) are the ideal build to face the hostile landscapes in which rally raids generally take place. .

After a solid start to his rally, with a 13th place finish in the opening leg, Petrucci was fighting for the top five in the second leg. But bad luck put us down once again, when there were 115 km to go. His KTM accused a technical problem, and not knowing how to fix it, Petrux he went to get his cell phone to call his team – only then discovering that he had no phone, no wallet, no documents (passport and driving license).

Blocked, Petrucci had no choice but to warn the organizers of his situation. A recovery team was sent to rescue him but this meant he would be given a time penalty which ultimately ended his chances of claiming overall victory. That penalty meant he could re-enter the rally for the third leg if the bike was repaired, but internal rumors once again started to instill doubt.

“I asked myself questions, I was in doubt, because I said that it was not possible for all these things to all happen to me,” he said after the problems of the second stage. “But at the same time I told myself that I could not go home because I had no cell phone or passport. I had nothing to go home. So I said, ‘ok, let’s try, you’re here to experience’. And from that moment on, I managed to make up many positions in one day ”.

In fact, his team fixed the bike and Petrucci was able to get back into the race to continue his learning process. And his resilience would be rewarded that day … more or less. He finished the stage in third place claiming “a podium”, but was penalized for a transgression of the speed zone. Then in the fifth stage everything was resolved.

# 90 Tech 3 KTM Factory Racing: Danilo Petrucci

Photo by: ASO

Getting lost in a crossing point together with a number of riders, Petrucci luckily ended up finding a way out and finished the stage just under six minutes behind the winner Toby Price. His colleague KTM, however, was penalized by six minutes for a speed infringement. This led Petrucci to become the first MotoGP rider in history to win a stage of the Dakar Rally.

It was a result that sent social media into a frenzy, as Petrucci’s exploits in the Dakar sparked interest far and wide. Furthermore, once again the genuine affection that the MotoGP paddock feels towards Petrucci was shown, with great support from his former colleagues. In fact, the support has been so much that Petrucci has started doing direct on Instagram to keep everyone updated.

“It was so, so good, because really, I have a good relationship with all the riders in MotoGP, with my old colleagues and all the MotoGP people in the paddock,” said Petrucci, who called his stage victory something truly unexpected. “I have really received messages from all of them, from Carmelo Ezpeleta who wrote me the day I was on the podium, to the last people working in MotoGP. Really a lot of people texted me, or were watching my streams on Instagram. This idea came about because many times during my life, and especially during my career and especially during my experience at the Dakar I said ‘if now I put a GoPro on my head and film myself I’ll get rich’! “

Petrucci’s stage victory, however, was not without incidents, as expected: Petrucci faced an obstacle that most MotoGP riders will probably never encounter … a camel! And in the fifth stage, the appearance of a camel (which can weigh up to 1000 kg and be over six feet tall) as it arrived on a dune forced him to avoid the action and fall. Not unreasonably, he “wanted to kill” the offending camel. This led to him firing a shot at the hideously patriarchal Saudi regime in his live Instagram, saying he didn’t go on with his camel assault because they are more popular than women in the country.

“When I crossed the stage line, I said, ‘Fuck, there was a camel on the track,'” recalled Petrucci. “And the other riders said ‘Yeah, we saw the camel, we saw the camel.’ I said ‘fuck, but I almost killed him’ because it’s really, really huge and it’s over three meters tall.

So when I saw him I said that if I collided with him I would destroy myself. “When I explained it to the people in the organization they said to me: ‘don’t say you hit the camel.’ I said ‘I didn’t hit the camel. ‘And they say,’ no, because here if you kill a camel, you have to pay the people back. ‘And I said,’ no, don’t worry, I almost killed myself. ‘And then I recognize that they were worried. a lot of camels. That’s why I say they care more for them than for women, but luckily I didn’t have any major problems with them. “