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MOTOGP: Ducati Considering Gibernau as Replacement for Melandri
Written by: Dennis Noyes   
06/21/2008
Donington, UK
 
Sete Gibernau (Photo: Ducati Corse) ยป More Photos

Sete Gibernau, twice runner-up in MotoGP, is now being seriously considered as a replacement for Marco Melandri, who continues to struggle at the back of the MotoGP field this weekend at Donington Park in both wet and dry conditions.

Although Melandri is contracted, there is even a possibility that Gibernau might be called in to replace the Italian before the season is over. Gibernau would need more time on the bike but could join the team as early as the Grand Prix of the Czech Republic.

However, if Ducati were really thinking of having the Spaniard join the team this year, he would have tested the 2008 bike instead of the 2009 bike. It is also possible that Ducati intended to offer Gibernau a place on the test team and, perhaps, invite him to ride next year’s bike as a wild card entrant later this season.

Gibernau, the grandson of Don Paco Bulto, founder of the now
defunct Bultaco motorcycle factory in Barcelona, retired from MotoGP after a series of crashes and injuries at the end of the 2006 season. He is now 35 and, in spite of being out of action, has kept in shape riding off road bikes. Although his lap times were discreet at Mugello last week, his feedback to the team was called “valuable” and, given the long lay-off, his times were promising.

Gibernau described the bike as, “a real Ducati, one that needs to be ridden with a very physical style.”

Gibernau won nine Grands Prix in the primer class but after his last win at Qatar in 2004, Valentino Rossi allegedly said the would make sure Sete never won again. Rossi later denied that statement, but then, at the first race of the 2005 season, Rossi made a brutal pass on Gibernau on the last corner of the last lap, knocking the Spaniard off the track and out of the lead.
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