Fausto Gresini, Team San Carlo Honda Gresini Racing team manager and owner is usually a very patient man and has been almost a father figure to Marco Melandri.
Gresini hired Melandri when the Italian rider was released by Poncharal’s Yamaha Tech3 team at the end of a very tough 2004 season and it looked like that no one was interested in him.
It was to Gresini, who Melandri turned to for advice and comfort in his disastrous year with Ducati and it was once again the ‘fatherly’ Gresini who hired Melandri when the Kawasaki-Hayate team folded at the end of the 2009.
So it is pretty surprising, for us at least, that Gresini in the usual blah, blah pre-event press release should end up criticizing his rider.
“Melandri is having yet another tough season and I am sorry for him.
Our team has tried everything and we have the support of Honda to give him what we think he needs but he is not happy and I am disappointed with that because we think we have done a good job for him.
It is always our objective to do well with both riders and to achieve that I think a certain level of positivity and confidence is required.
I don’t want to cause controversy but maybe that is what Melandri is missing right now.
In the four races that remain we will continue to help him achieve the best possible result in the hope that he can achieve it and then the only thing left will be to wish him luck in his next adventure, which I hope will be a success.
” We definitely remember that Herve Poncharal was much more critical of Melandri ’s character.
In an interview with Moto Journal, picked up by the Italian media back in May 2008, the French manager laid it into the Italian saying that Melandri was his worst memory as a team manager, that he was talented, but with a dog like character and never put himself into discussion and this was probably the reason that he’d found obstacles in his career.
Apparently Melandri who of late, has become very outspoken, slagging Valentino Rossi and Loris Capirossi at the Dedikato event (which is also organized by Gresini) and switching to WSBK with Yamaha Sterilgarda next season and not being able to test the R1 before the end of the season, feels the need to burn the last remaining bridges with MotoGP.