RSM Scot Racing has chosen two time Supersport World champion (2001 with Kawasaki, 2008 with Honda Ten Kate) Andrew Pitt as Alex De Angelis subsitute in their Moto2 team.
DeAngelis in turn is subbing for injured Hiroshi Aoyama in the Interwetten Honda MotoGP team for the next five or six rounds.
Pitt will race all the Moto2 GPs the De Angelis will miss except for the upcoming Sachsenring round where the Sammarinese team is going solo, fielding only Niccolò Canepa.
Emanuele Ventura (Technical Director) said : “As a consequence of the crash suffered in Catalunya by Niccolò, his bike caught fire and was destroyed by flames – just the frontfork and front brake caliper survived*.
Having to re-build the entire bike, we decided for a modified frame, taking into account all information we got from this first part of the season.
It will take a longer time to have it ready and we’re going to compete in Germany with just one bike, but it seems to us the wiser way to proceed.
Anyway, while Andrew will debut with us as a GP rider in Brno, we are already organizing a test before, to allow him to begin his testing duties as soon as possible, as developing the bike is the major issue, at the moment, for us”.
The Australian rider has had a topsy turvy 2010 season so far.
He first started the season in the World Superbike Championship riding for the new defunct BMW privateer team Reitwagen and then was called in to replace Ian Lowry (who replaced the retiring Neil Hodgson) in Motorpoint Yamaha team in the BSB Championship.
Pitt has competed in 23 MotoGP races and has an important experience as a tester (Moriwaki, Ilmor, Michelin, Yamaha).
* Note:When Canepa’s Moto 2 bike went up in a fireball at Catalunya, the Italian rider revealed to the Italian media that the first marshal who arrived at the scene of the crash did not have a fire extinguisher with him and when the second marshal showed up (after four or five laps) his fire extinguisher did not work.
We’d like to know what would have happened to Canepa if his leathers had been covered with spilt fuel and had caught fire? Just thinking about this hypothetical situation, gives us the shivers.