Marco Melandri interview: “Now I’m a DJ, I would have liked to race with Valentino”

January 1st – 11.52am – TRENTO

We are republishing the interviews most appreciated by readers of the Gazzetta dello Sport in 2025. The one with Marco Melandri was published on 12 October.

A morning with Marco Melandri. With him to talk about his career. Made of some triumphs and many regrets. Told in Piazza Cesare Battisti. At the Beta stand, with a hundred enthusiasts standing all around him. Talking about the good times and the bad times. 2008, so to speak. Season prepared with a signature on the contract signed a year and a half before.

He had the feeling of having done exactly the right thing at the right time, given what Stoner did on the Desmo in 2007…

“But the Ducati I had – alas – was not the one of today. After the first three laps at the first test I had terror on my face. I had already understood everything: that Ducati was a block of concrete, it was a stripped-down Ciao. And in a certain sense it gave me comfort to see that all the others who tried, with that bike, also had difficulties: Rossi, Hayden… Only Stoner was able to ride it and even today he doesn’t know why. Now I look at today’s Ducati and a little I have regrets.”

And from there there was then the crucial year on a Kawasaki that was saying goodbye…

“In a practically amateur team, there were six of us.”

But with many positive signs, full and partial results.

“Which gave me the strength to relaunch myself”.

“It’s easier to change teams than bikes. And if you look carefully, today when they change everyone brings the crew chief and the electronic engineer with them. You need human relationships, you need people who understand you. With whom you understand each other with a glance.”

Then there was the move to Aprilia.

“It occurred exactly as Gigi Dall’Igna moved to Ducati.”

With the subsequent migration from Superbike to MotoGP.

“In this case, against my will.”

In short, a series of unfortunate events.

“Although the worst was when I was in BMW, because just when I was leading the World Championship they said they would close the team”.

Can a comparison be made with today’s MotoGP?

“It’s not that I like making comparisons very much. To tell the truth, I don’t like it at all. It’s true that today’s races don’t excite me very much. And evidently it’s no coincidence that on social media, on YouTube, they often show the 2006 races. Because there were three or four of us in a second. Which is not possible now, because with the speeds they have they can’t afford to separate even one meter later.”

However, not everything on the track happened with a precise logic.

“Sometimes things happen that aren’t very normal. Do you remember Folger that battle to win at the Sachsenring? Marquez said: “I was in a duel with someone I didn’t know who he was”, just when Germany was risking the GP. And the Honda flying in Japan, the KTM going very well in Austria…”.

Another passion he is cultivating is that of DJing.

“I found my father’s turntable, with his Pink Floyd and Dire Straits vinyls. I started messing around with those. I went to work for my grandfather, who restores furniture, he paid me 5 thousand lire an hour, as soon as I had enough money to buy two turntables and a mixer, my grandfather never saw me again. Now I play records, I’m certainly not saying that I “play”, I’m starting to produce. And at the end of October I’ll be in Monza. I’ll be at the console with giants, I feel like I was as a kid the first times I went to the track and watched the big names of those times. I really miss Linkin Park, because they were geniuses”.

Do you have any regrets about your career on the track?

“I would have liked to be Valentino’s partner. Because since I was a child we traveled together and I always played with him…”.