Valentino Rossi’s brother leaves Ducati and joins Mir in the official HRC team. After 21 years Honda will reunite with a member of Vale’s family
– Milan
HRC’s announcement arrived at 9 am sharp in Italy on Monday 26 November, even though the news had been known for some time. Luca Marini is a Honda rider and will race with the official team for the next two World Championships, until 2025. At his side will be the 2020 MotoGP world champion, the Spaniard Joan Mir, who raced for the first time with the Honda manufacturer in 2023. golden wing alongside Marc Marquez, who moved to the Gresini team with Ducati for 2024.
marine occasion
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Valentino Rossi’s brother will therefore take the place of the Doctor’s bitter rival, Marc Marquez who contested several MotoGP World Championships in Vale, with the climax of the feud in the 2015 championship. For Marini, the great opportunity he has been waiting for for some time, because he reaches a HRC will have to try to start from scratch, without the totem Marquez who has made its fortune in the last ten years but which – after the injury in Jerez 2020 – has also marked its involution due mainly to a motorcycle designed on Marquez but that’s the same Marctian he finally struggled to understand and drive as best he could. 2024 thus becomes a sort of T-zero for HRC, with two still relatively young drivers (26 years old, both born in 1997 and born three weeks apart) with whom to work to grow the project in a different way RC-213V.
the honda-valentino bond
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Marini, Moto2 vice-champion in 2020, 6 victories and 15 podiums in the middle class, has been racing in MotoGP since 2021: in three seasons with Ducati – first in the Esponsorama-Sky team then in his brother’s VR46 – he has collected two podiums in the race (all in 2023, 2nd in Austin and 3rd in Qatar) and four in the Sprints. His move to HRC also hides a suggestion: after 20 years, a member of the “Valentiniana” family returns to race with HRC; Rossi had left the Japanese manufacturer after the 2003 MotoGP title to race with rivals Yamaha, where he had written legendary pages of the MotoGP. Twenty-one years later, HRC finds Rossi’s brother again and aims to return to the top of MotoGP, the most valuable showcase for the Honda commercial brand, leader of the world motorized two-wheeler market.
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