Bastianini at the Trento Festival: “Before motorbikes? Diving up to the European Championships!”

There are people who enter directly with the helmet or with the designer t-shirt of some team to the evening with Enea Bastianini at the Trento Sports Festival. The 27-year-old MotoGP rider of Red Bull Ktm Tech3 from Romagna, with the look of a singer, is welcomed at the Trento Philharmonic, as if to underline the “music” of the engines. And it is told from the age of 7 and from the first race (“but I fell, finishing fourth”) and from the slow climb up the minor categories. “I immediately thought it was my future but when I was 15, financial problems began. But Fausto Gresini arrived and believed in me.”

dives

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In reality, Enea also has a background in diving. “I got curious in the pool, I also made it to the European Championships but it’s a very difficult sport mentally, I sometimes got scared and, in any case, my future was elsewhere”. At the time they called it the ‘Pilotuffo’ and “I didn’t like it that much. But diving gave me a physical advantage in the world of motorbikes, as well as teaching me how to fall”. Then, in 2014, I landed in Moto 3. “At the beginning I thought about learning and having fun, I was 16 years old after all. References? Miller, a madman even then.” There is the victory at Misano (for which he had gone white, sensing that he would win and then had the sides painted green and red) but there is no shortage of regrets: “In 2015 we could have fought for the World Championship but I made many mistakes and 2017 was a black year, the team had changed and I struggled to communicate. However, Moto 3 taught me a lot”. Not to take things too seriously: one year he chooses the number 3.3, referring to the strength of the beer.

victory

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However, it is in Moto2 that the World Championship won in 2020 arrives, physically prepared at his girlfriend’s house in Rimini with his father’s diving weights: “We arrived in Portimao with four of us competing and, something that usually doesn’t happen to me, I didn’t sleep that night. And instead…”. He won the title and the subsequent leap into MotoGP, “where I knew I would have to do well straight away, despite starting with an old bike”. In 2022 the move to Team Gresini, “with a very competitive bike, in fact the first victory arrived which however I did not experience with full joy because Gresini was no longer there”. And here the nickname “Beast” is also consecrated, given by an old mechanic. A “Beast” who admits that he is “good at managing tires” and who reveals that he is passionate about classical music “because it energizes me”.

discussion

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Bastianini also talks about the move to the Ducati team in 2023, “when my expectations grew a lot” but the injury in the first race affected him for a long time “and the more I did to recover, the worse it got”, until a new accident in Catalonia erases the dreams. Then the return and the victory in Malaysia, “one of the most exciting races of my life even though I was physically destroyed”. In 2024 he finally admits that he felt in doubt – “but when I knew I was leaving the team, the pressure dropped and I recovered” – and this year “I’m working towards 2026”. However, it was already a long and important journey for someone who was struck by motorbikes by chance. As a child, his father took him to the workshop to repair a scooter and, seeing a mini motorbike, he no longer thought of anything else. “I was a slightly agitated kid but I let off steam with the motorbikes, even if it wasn’t easy for my parents. I waited every evening to ride on the Cattolica track, you know, we had the keys…”.