And the season 2021 is over… with a bitter end for the SIC58 Squadra Corse, maybe because with both the riders in the first two rows, on Sunday we were expecting something more.
It has been a tough year, long, full of uncertainties, difficult under so many aspects, especially speaking of results already at the beginning of the season. We started from the very beginning with Fellon, who grew up so much that he arrived a few cents from the first row, but who couldn’t make the step necessary to reach some points in the championship. We were expecting so much more from Suzuki. As one of the strongest riders of 2020, we thought he would have given us the Championship Title. But instead we passed from boasting for being 2nd in the team’s championship, to being penultimate. Disheartening.
Unexpectedly, our pupil has been Mattia Casadei, who behaved as a good rider, unluckily covid made him unfit for one GP, losing some important points that were essential to stay in the top positions of the championship. Anyway I’m so happy for him, for how much he has changed, for how far he has arrived. With us since 2013, we’ve been for him like a trampoline as we will see him next year riding with Pons racing, the team that won the MotoE championship this year.
I’ve always been sure we are a good school, both for riders and mechanics, truck drivers and kids that every year we take here in this magic motorbike world championship. I’ve always been sure we are good teachers for these kinds of jobs. And I had one more proof of that, as some of my team has been taken by the big teams of MotoGP for the season 2022. I can’t not be proud of that, because some of them were just apprentices, they were still learning. But what makes me even more proud is that a technical director as Marco Grana (who has nothing to learn from us but everything to teach) decides not to change, but to stay by my side besides the flattery from Yamaha in MotoGP.
It is fair that people feel free to change team, role, to develop their careers, and it is right that a Tatsuki, who shared with us so many years and even more beautiful emotions, looks up for a new road, a new house somewhere else. He became famous when he arrived at the Sic58, we grew up with him and it has been right and beautiful like this. At the end, life has to go as it does, it is like a puzzle that sooner or later will fit perfectly. I would have just liked to know the change from someone a little sooner.
Who decides to stay, stays because believes in us, in our brand, in our philosophy of life and work… There is who leaves, who arrives, and even who “comes back”… and it is with great pleasure that I announce our second rider: Riccardo Rossi. Our ex rider from when he was just 13 years old and he was a child, now he is a grown un kid, kind, mature and full of wish to work. Welcome back home Riki!
-PaoloSic58-