Dakar, Petrucci talks about the difficulties and invites Marquez and Dovizioso

Constant cold, trees with spikes and a sense of danger that glues the participants. Danilo Petrucci, 11 days later, opens, together with a smile, the doors of his Dakar: joys emerge but also a swarm of difficulties, from which the Ktm driver removes all veils. He then tells the race and the evisceration, live on Instagram with Nolan, his sponsor for 12 years, to the sound of anecdotes and a few tears of genuine emotion: the Dakar forged it.

Dakar, just the word

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“I discovered that it is difficult even to tell it …”. But then the tape rewinds it, and well, with its proverbial sympathy, converting even difficult moments into laughter, starting with ready go when, at the third stage, it must not have been very pleasant to find yourself with a broken fuse and a wallet lost: “I accidentally blocked the wrong credit card, the one that was left with me.” but it demolishes. ”And there are many thorns to live with in the dune rally:“ The transfers at 3 am before the special stages were torture ”.

Pitfalls like cats

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And then when it finally started, the pitfalls were always lurking: “There is no convenience of the garage close at hand, you have to improvise as a mechanic and then understand that to gain two seconds you could lose everything. Bumps, dunes, you don’t know what happens to you. It is a struggle with instinct. You have to accept that you cannot control everything and fear is good because it limits the risks. Even if there are pilots who give very little value to their life. When you have been driving for so many hours you just have to stay calm: sometimes you struggle only to think and eating is important. Like at school, even if I didn’t study much, when at a certain point you don’t understand anything and you have to take a break. In the bivouacs we were then 5000 with all the organizational problems of the case “. So not a walk: “Initially I wanted to go there to see the view but then I got carried away. They told me to go slow and instead… “And he has no regrets:” It was good in the end that he was immediately out of the game so I ran without pressure, I felt free “. And the panorama, huddled in the concentration that the Dakar requires, was almost impossible to see, trees with thorns breaking through the hand guards apart. Not even in the brief spare time where survival was the only leitmotif: “My favorite activity was to eat. You eat at 3 then you have dinner at 7 at 8.30 you sleep”.

Insults … wrong

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Embedded in Petrucci’s story there is no shortage of funny anecdotes: “I was lost and I asked a Frenchman for information on the road to take, he had already passed. He did not answer me. Once the route is understood, I have done everything to reach it. I wanted to send him to f ***. I did it: it wasn’t him. ” And again: “The pee, I realized the problem when I had already left. I used to stand up like cyclists. One day I realized that I had broken the buckle of the suit that no longer closed “. More laughter.

Rose in the desert

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But among the thorns, there are also many roses from the Dakar desert: “The nice thing was that we were all together: from the first driver to the last of the amateurs and the sense of common risk united us. I’ve heard so many extraordinary stories: my teammate sold out everything to make the Dakar. Then there were people who ran with vehicles with which I would not have even gone to drink coffee. ” An experience that he would do again and that he “sponsors” his MotoGP colleagues: “When you’re there you can’t wait to finish now that I’m back, I would almost go back there immediately. I recommend it to everyone, Mir told me he would like to try. But the others would also have the skills, if you have arrived in MotoGP there is a reason. Dovizioso and Marquez would see them as anyone with good off-road skills ”. Now for Petrucci a few more days of rest “It also hurts me to climb the stairs: I have lost skin blood , hair, everything I could lose ”and then here are the Sbk tests with the Ducati Panigale V4 from a MotoAmerica point of view: the doors of a new adventure are already wide open for the rider from Terni.