Marco Simoncelli will not be getting his wish to partecipate in two rounds of the WSBK aboard the new Aprilia .
Just a second slower than MotoGP veteran Nakano, at the Valencia tests last november, the 21-year-old Simoncelli was thought to have a chance of at wildcard ride in Australia and Qatar with Shinya Nakano and Max Biaggi, but Gigi Dall’Igna, Piaggio Group’s technical race director, announced yesterday that Simoncelli will not be riding the Aprilia RSV-4.
“It was Marco’s intention to take part in the races but for numerous reasons the group has decided to decline this opportunity.
There’s going to be lot of pressure on the debut and really the last thing that we need is to add to this pressure “said Dall’Igna.
“There would also have been big problems, that could have been solved, but we would have had to organize a special team for those two overseas races, without forgetting we’re still in the development stage and we cannot risk not giving enough support to Biaggi and Nakano that have to ride the entire season with the new RSV-4.
”“It’s a definite no, I’m afraid” continued Dall’Igna “Development is going well and the problems that we had on the last day of testing in Kyalami have been solved, but there is still a lot of work to do.
”Simoncelli will not be involved in the 250 tests at Jerez from January 26th to 28th.
