Melandri says Biaggi excludes Italians at Aprilia

Rider Marco Melandri will make his comeback in the 2012 World Superbike Championship, since last season he landed in this championship thanks to Yamaha, but unfortunately the Japanese manufacturer will not be in the next SBK edition and he has had to find another team, and the chosen one is BMW, with which he hopes to keep working and improving.

What is clear is that the 33 showed a lot in his first season in Superbikes, and he did not make things easy for veterans like Max Biaggi or Carlos Checa himself, so when the teams learned that the Italian was going to be left without a team, they showered him with offers, including one from factory Aprilia.

The rumours and Melandri himself say that Biaggi has an agreement with Aprilia that excludes the number 3 from having one of his compatriots as a teammate, so Melandri was completely ruled out as Aprilia’s rider for 2012, and in the end they opted for Eugene Laverty, Melandri’s former teammate at Yamaha.

We don’t quite understand the meaning of this agreement between them, since we don’t understand why Italians and not another nationality; for example, Checa could be his teammate and there would be no problems, at least in principle, while Melandri hasn’t even had the chance, all to avoid problems and arguments with the 2010 SBK world champion Biaggi, or at least that is what Marco says in an interview with the Gazzetta.

He also mentioned a small aspect that bothered him about Yamaha: they would not count on him to replace Jorge Lorenzo in the last races of the 2011 season, when the Mallorcan was injured, and they opted for the Japanese rider Nakasuga.

I would have liked to take Lorenzo’s place in the last two races while he was injured. It would have been a nice farewell gift, something Yamaha owed me.

Via | TwoWheelsblog.com