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Shadow era world champion6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() While his half-brother was on his way to racking up the second-most wins in motorcycle grand prix racing history, Marini found joy in simply riding bikes. You fight for the title in Moto2 and you ride like this in MotoGP because you are a very good rider."ĭespite his legendary genes, despite his successes in junior categories, Marini is surprised he's made it this far. "You don't fight for the championship in Moto2 just because you are the brother of Valentino. " fought for the championship in Moto2, he lost in the last race to Enea Bastianini," he told ESPN. Marini insists it doesn't bother him, that his critics are free to believe what they want to believe, but Salucci is more forceful in countering that notion. Marini only got his seat in MotoGP because he's Rossi's brother. It's a completely different history, it's a different era, different bikes. "Not just for me, for everybody: for Marc Marquez, for Alex Rins, for Pecco Bagnaia, for Fabio Quartararo. "It's impossible to make any comparisons with Vale," Marini said. Sharing a bloodline with the greatest rider the sport has ever seen creates an expectation to deliver on a par with the greatest rider the sport has ever seen. He's known Marini "since he was in ," and considering the enormous shadow Rossi's legend casts, he jokes that "Luca chose the worst sport" to compete in.įirst, there's the pressure. He is Rossi's childhood friend, his assistant and confidante, and now the team principal at Rossi's eponymous VR46 Ducati outfit. I just saw my brother come back from work, this was very normal."Īlessio "Uccio" Salucci witnessed Rossi's duality first hand. When I was at home watching the races and Monday he would come back home. ![]() "This is something that occurred to me as I started to arrive in the world championship. "He was just my brother, and I never thought about how he was famous, popular and important for our sport," Marini said. Rossi alluded to not being able to venture outside of his Milan home without being mobbed by adoring fans, eventually leaving Italy for a more anonymous life in London in 2000, before returning to his home country later in the decade and sharing a home with his little brother. Such was his gusto, his charisma, that his superhuman accomplishments on track yielded a surreal celebrity status off it. ![]() It was August of 1997, and Rossi was mere weeks away from winning the first of those nine titles. Rossi was 18 years old when his mother had Marini. He also happens to be Marini's half-brother. The "Vale" that Marini is referring to is Valentino Rossi, a nine-time motorcycle grand prix world champion almost universally considered to be the greatest of all time. "It was a period around 2000 when was a very important sport in the world, and especially in Italy, because of Vale." "We were lucky because at my age, a lot of families wanted their kids to try pocket bikes," Marini told ESPN. There's a simple, perfectly reasonable explanation for how VR46 Ducati rider Luca Marini began on his journey to MotoGP. Luca Marini steps out of GOAT brother Valentino Rossi's shadow to make a name for himself in MotoGP You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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