Danilo Petrucci at the MotoAmerica test with BMW: “I was treated like a king”

At Magny-Cours, BMW and Danilo Petrucci announced that there would be no further collaboration in the 2027 Superbike World Championship. South African Brad Binder will take the Italian’s place alongside Miguel Oliveira next year. At the same time, they hinted that they could well envisage a future working together outside the World Championship.

A move for Petrucci to MotoAmerica seemed an obvious prospect, as the BMW M1000RR is competitive there and the 35-year-old had already competed in the US series in 2022 – at that time on a factory Ducati for the Warhorse HSBK team. Petrucci won five races and finished runner-up behind Jake Gagne (Yamaha). He subsequently moved to the World Superbike Championship, but the veteran has always emphasised how much he enjoyed his time in the US.

BMW’s flagship team in MotoAmerica is OrangeCat Racing, which fields Sean Kelly and Jayson Uribe. With one race remaining, Kelly leads the championship, whilst Uribe’s position is under threat. At last weekend’s event in Austin, Texas, Petrucci was a guest of OrangeCat.

“A huge thank you to the entire OrangeCat crew, who treated me like royalty and let me try out their bike. It was a brilliant weekend – thanks to BMW and the team for that,” said Petrucci in an exclusive interview with SPEEDWEEK.com. “It was Sven [Blusch]’s idea, and we sorted everything out at Magny-Cours. I then watched the MotoAmerica race on Sunday to get a feel for the team – they’re definitely operating at World Championship level! It’s a fairly new team, but they’ve got lots of experienced people from the US scene and from around the world too. From that perspective, everything’s perfect, but they’re also superbly organised in every other respect and look after over 200 guests at race weekends.”

Petrucci continued: “They then organised an exclusive track day and I had the chance to do a few laps on the bike. I wouldn’t call it a test, but I was still able to gain a lot of insights – particularly into how the team works, as well as the bike and the tyres. The differences are significant, particularly with regard to the Dunlop tyres, but I quickly matched the pace of the others, even though I only did about 30 laps. So it was really a worthwhile experience. Now we’ll have to see if we can sort something out.”

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In fact, it seems only the signatures are missing to finalise Petrucci’s move to MotoAmerica.

BMW-Ass Danilo Petrucci beim MotoAmerica-Test in Austin

Foto: Instagram/Petrux9