Blog for Motogp

During the 2013 season, in Albacete (so either June or September), Emilio approached Eduardo to talk about Fabio. Apparently, Eduardo wasn't liking the potential move to Marc VDS in Moto2 and the presence of Monster (remember when I said that Eduardo only cared about his energy drink brand?) and Emilio said that it took him days and days before being able to have Fabio's contract signed.

In 2014, Fabio was finally in the Monlau Competition structure and he joined team Honda Estrella Galicia 0,0. Emilio says that they taught Fabio a lot of things then, especially in the way his race weekends were structured. Fabio also got to try new bike parts that HRC was then giving to Alex R. and Marc.

The 2014 season of CEV Moto3 contained 11 races. Fabio won 9 of them and finished the other two second. He obviously got a second title that year. Please have a look at one of my fave quotes from the book, where Emilio compares Marc & Fabio at 14 years old.

In the summer of 2014, Emilio had to go talk to Carmelo Ezpeleta because back then, the minimum age to participate in a GP was 16 (note : Fabio would only turn 16 on the 20th of April 2015, the day after the 3rd round of that MotoGP/Moto2/Moto3 season). After a bunch of discussions, Emilio managed to have the big instances say that "a 15 years-old crowned in CEV could start in the World Championship even if his birthday was after the start of the season" [note : we essentially still have that rule today except now you have to be 18 and 17 years old are accepted if they were crowned champions the year prior].

Now the year is 2015 and Fabio is riding for Estrella Galicia 0,0 in Moto3. His season does not go as he would have hoped. He gets two second places in the early part of the season but finishes 10th and has a couple of crashes, ends up beat by his teammate Jorge Navarro.

Here's what Emilio had to say about the situation : "The issue wasn't Fabio but this Eduardo, taking care of him. [...] He didn't know much about racing. He only had one thing in mind : to see Fabio on top of every practice session. He wanted him to win before he had even learnt what had to be learned. This attitude didn't benefice anyone."

Mid-season, Emilio said : "His results until now have exceeded our expectations. The objective of the first half of the season is to gain experience. Some people seem to forget that he's only 16 years old."

As the season progresses, tensions rise between Eduardo and Emilio. Eduardo wants to take Fabio to Leopard Racing (they were on top of the Moto3 Championship with Danny Kent then) while other team managers are interested in Fabio, including Aki Ajo. Aki said that he was really interested in getting Fabio and that he did a lot of efforts to have him in his team. He said : "I remember that it was a real challenge and that insisted a lot, I was convinced that we could do something to help him. When I met him in my office, I immediately felt like he was the type of guy I would really like to work with. I think that he felt the same thing then but there were other reasons, coming from his management or elsewhere, that made this not happen."

Towards the end of August, in Misano, Fabio gets a double fracture in his right ankle and shortens his first Moto3 season. Fabio wasn't doing well then but that's when he met Tom, please see some of my other favorite quotes.

At the end of 2015, Fabio leaves the Monlau structure. Back then, Eduardo justified it by saying this : "When we started renegotiating the contract with Alzamora, the question of our liberties for the future came. The contract we were offered was engaging us for a longer time than I wished for Fabio. Leopard was giving us this freedom and everything else I asked for. The Estrella Galicia project went from CEV to MotoGP, going through Moto3 and Moto2. I understand this philosophy and I suppose it suits most riders. It wasn't fine for me because Fabio is not a rider like the others. He's a special rider and he needs to be free so he can always make the best choice at the right time. The Almazora project is not flexible enough for us."

Also, like I mentioned earlier, Eduardo didn't want long term because he didn't want to end up in Moto2 with Marc VDS. Michael Bartholemy, then head of that team, says : "This guy was crazy. He didn't know anything about motorbikes and racing. He thought he was managing Lewis Hamilton, he wanted 300-pages contracts, wanted to choose the sponsors, etc..."