Fausto Gresini, 1961-2021

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Fausto Gresini passed away February 23, 2021, from complications due to COVID-19. (MotoGP/)

“Be careful. It’s hard here,” says Gresini Racing technical director Fabrizio Cecchini, who had been alongside Fausto Gresini since 1997, when Gresini founded the team bearing his name. Fausto continued to plan the future of the Gresini Racing from his hospital bed up until the very last moment, working closely with Carlo Merlini, Cecchini, and Andrea Visani, the team’s three pillars. “In the moments when he felt better, we did some video calls… We read his lips, because Fausto spoke with difficulty due to the tube in his trachea that allowed him to breathe in those two long months of fighting.”

Gresini took ill with COVID-19 just before Christmas and was hospitalized on December 24 in Imola; he was transferred to a specialist COVID care ward in Bologna three days later. “A lion, a warrior,” his wife Nadia describes him, “but also a husband, a father, and a friend, a colleague to most of the people in the paddock because he loved racing and did it from his heart. We will continue the adventure of Gresini Racing. We will make Fausto proud.”

After experiencing the both joyful glory of victory champagne and despair at the loss of two of his riders, Daijiro Kato in 2003 at Suzuka and Marco Simoncelli in 2011 at Sepang, Fausto fought the most important race of his life with the strength that characterized his career as a Grand Prix rider and entrepreneur. On February 23, the Gresini team announced the Italian had lost his fight with the virus at the age of 60.

A Life Around Motorcycles

With Fausto, the Grand Prix world lost a protagonist, one of the most charismatic figures of the last 40 years of racing. First, as a 125cc rider, with 132 starts, 21 wins, and 47 podium finishes, and two GP titles in 1985 and 1987. Then as the owner of the only other team, aside from giant Petronas, committed in all the classes: MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, MotoE, and a squad in the Italian championship to raise young talent.His career as a rider started quite late, as was common at that time. “I have humble origins,” Gresini liked to say. “My mother used to work in a sawmill, while my father drove bulldozers. At 13 or 14, I realized I had to learn a job, so I went to work as a mechanic.”

Gresini racing for Garelli in 1985. (MotoGP/)

Gresini was from Imola, and whenever he had some free time, he would go to the Imola circuit to see others competing on track and dream. “I was 17 years old and my dream was to become, one day, a pro rider,” Gresini told me on December 18 in what would be our last interview. “I knew that I couldn’t afford it for a long time without results, but even if I finished as the last one, I wanted to try.”

His boss at the workshop was his mechanic on the weekend when Gresini scored his first wins in the Italian championship. They showed up at the track in a Fiat Abarth A112 towing an MBA 125. Gresini liked the mechanics and would talk with them for hours about cylinders, gear ratios, and carburetion. Motorcycles were the way to open the doors to his world and his friendship, and once you were Fausto’s friend, you were friends for a lifetime.

Gresini left the workshop in 1983 to become a pro rider. His first world title arrived in 1985 with Garelli and he repeated in 1987, the year in which only a technical problem prevented him from winning all 11 victories in 11 GPs. Those superb seasons were followed by other satisfactions as he switched to Hondas at Team Pileri, where he was teamed up with a young Loris Capirossi. Gresini proved to be a true team player, helping Capirossi to win his first title in 1990. The following year he finished second behind him. Alongside Gresini, there was a beautiful curly-haired girl, Nadia, who would become his wife and the mother of their four children, Lorenzo, Luca, Alice, and Agnese.

The Turning Point

“There is a delicate and crucial moment in the career of a rider when they have to make a choice… I had to decide whether to become an old rider or a young manager. Once again, I followed my passion,” Gresini would say. “As a rider I had my satisfactions, 11 wins in a row, 21 in total. I opted to build my own team.”

The adventure of Gresini Racing started in 1997 when Fabrizio Cecchini received a call from Honda Brazil to line up Alex Barros riding one of Honda’s new privateer NSR500V twins. It was an amazing experience, but it also required a massive budget. So in 1999 Gresini dropped down to 250s, welcoming his old teammate Capirossi, who finished third overall to champion Valentino Rossi and Tohru Ukawa. But more importantly, Gresini had won Honda’s trust. The following year the Japanese giant entrusted him with its greatest hope: Daijiro Kato.

Kato was more than a rider to Gresini and the Gresini Racing. He was a son. Kato had moved from Japan to live and train in Misano and be close to the workshop. In 2001, Kato dominated the championship, earning the world title and promotion to the premier class, riding an NSR500 in 2002 and an RC211V the next year. But tragically, in April 2003, Kato lost his life at Suzuka. Gresini suffered his first tragic loss, but decided to keep going. Kato’s teammate Sete Gibernau won the very next race, establishing himself as the first title contender to Rossi.

Over the next three seasons Gresini proved that a satellite team could battle the big factory teams, thanks to its technical expertise and Gresini’s special quality of motivating his riders, as he had been one of them. Thanks to the strong sponsorship from Movistar, and the team’s enthusiasm and passion, Gresini’s riders finished second overall to MotoGP champion Rossi. It was the era of Gibernau in 2003 and 2004, and Marco Melandri in 2005, results that made Gresini Racing the strongest independent team in the MotoGP paddock.

Fausto Gresini could boast an incredible record as team owner with five world titles: Daijiro Kato in 250cc in 2001; Dani Pedrosa in 250cc in 2004, under the tutelage of team manager Alberto Puig; Toni Elias, first Moto2 champion in 2010; and more recently, Jorge Martin in Moto3 in 2018 and Matteo Ferrari in MotoE in 2019.

Celebrating Jorge Martin’s 2018 Moto3 championship. (MotoGP/)

“I have always dreamt high,” Gresini told me in December, a few days before he tested positive for COVID-19. “I have always tried to raise the bar on track and in the services we offer. We are a private team, so the sponsors are, first of all, our partners. They are part of the Gresini Racing family. We are present in all the classes to offer our partners the best solution for them. We look for synergies, for partners that share our vision and our passion for motorcycles and for racing.”

Last December he announced the renewal of the team’s agreement with Dorna as an independent MotoGP team through 2026. “The renewal is strategic,” he told me. “It is vital because it opens to new scenarios and it gives us an extra boost of motivation… We have been through difficult years with a lack of results. We want to come back competitive as we have always been. I really look forward to returning to running the MotoGP team in first person. I miss not having the first word on the riders’ choice or the technical decisions.”

Gresini was looking ahead with the passion of a rider and the attitude of the businessman. He felt responsible for his staff of 70 people, which meant, for him, 70 families to care for. “During the lockdown in March, I was scared; to block the MotoGP circus because of the pandemic would have meant it would disappear,” he said. “As an entrepreneur, I felt responsibility for my employees. We revised the contracts with the sponsors and I took some risks to support my people, because Gresini Racing is first of all a family.”

The Farewell

A rider, a businessman, a champion. On Saturday, February 23, the last hug to Fausto was given in his home town, at the Imola circuit, the place he loved most. Attendance was restricted due to COVID, but among those there to pay respects were Loris Capirossi, godfather to Gresini’s son Lorenzo; Marco Melandri; Gigi Dall’Igna of Ducati; Lucio Cecchinello of LCR Honda; and Paolo Simoncelli.

Gresini on the grid with Marco Simoncelli, Estoril, 2011. (MotoGP/)

“Fausto bet on me after my first two years in MotoGP,” Melandri said. “He trusted me, and together we became world champions. He remained close to me even when I switched to Ducati in 2008. Instead of feeling betrayed, he would call me after a difficult race. We used to have dinner together. He was my mentor, my friend, my older brother. He helped me to stand up again when I was falling, but he was also the first one to celebrate with.”

I can understand Marco, because I also had the pleasure to be part of Gresini Racing in the years of Gibernau and Melandri. Once you are part of the Gresini Racing family, you remain it even afterward. Our paths may have divided professionally, but the friendship and support were always there. The Gresini was always open for a coffee or a quick lunch with the boss.

Ciao, Fausto. (MotoGP/)

I remember the violent adrenaline rush of the impossible pass, the wins of Sete Gibernau over Valentino Rossi, the shoulder contact between Valentino on Sete at Jerez in 2005, Marco Melandri’s beautiful first victory in Turkey in 2005. It was David against Goliath with Fausto Gresini, the proud leader of a satellite team capable of challenging the giant Honda Racing Corporation. I remember the moments of celebration in the hospitality area with Colin Edwards and Gibernau, after a victory that finished with pies in faces, laughter, and hugs. I remember tragic days when we cursed the demons of speed and sport, the bodies of Daijiro Kato and Marco Simoncelli helpless on the unforgiving asphalt. In the same way the tragedy of Fausto Gresini reached our home. But the virus that took Fausto away brought the family back together.

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