Buzzin MotoGP

Sete Gibernau

Sete Gibernau has confirmed he has signed for the Onde 2000 Ducati team for the 2009 season in the MotoGP World Championship.

The announcement was made last night at the team’s official presentation in Valencia and he will be riding with the number 59.

Gibernau said,

“I’m excited about what it means to be a MotoGP rider, I’ve come back to enjoy it again and it’s a good opportunity for me.  That’s my main goal; to enjoy riding.  I’m still open to learning again, even at 35.

I’ve been watching and I’ve been impressed with the riders.  I have a lot of respect for them and I have to be conscious that it’s going to be difficult.  I’m going to have to work very hard and I’m ready for that.”

Gibernau is no stranger to MotoGP, he joined the Moviestar Honda team in 2003 when in the opening round of the Championship, his team-mate, Daijiro Kato was tragically killed at Suzuka.  He continued to ride with Kato’s number #74 alongside his own #15 on his bike, and not only won the next round for Kato but continued to challenge Valentino Rossi for the rest of the season.  He actually finished the season with 277 points, the highest points to ever not win the MotoGP.

In 2004, he was Rossi’s main rival, after the Italian had changed team to race for Yamaha.  The two had been battling it out for the championship until it all got out-of-hand at the Qatar round.  Rossi accused Gibernau of pressuring the officials into disqualifying him from the qualifying results for allegedly tampering with the starting line on the grid.  It wasn’t actually Gibernau that had accused Rossi, but his team, and they were proved right after the security camera’s showed Rossi’s team embedding extra rubber onto the start spot with burn-outs and wheel spinning tyres to ensure more grip.  Rossi was penalised by being moved to the back of the grid.

The rivalry continued in 2005, when at the opening round at Jerez, Gibernau led most of the race followed closely by Rossi.  On the penultimate lap, Rossi passed Gibernau and opened a gap, Rossi then made a mistake allowing Gibernau to re-take the lead.  On the final corner, Rossi made an aggressive move to pass Gibernau and take the lead, he went onto win the race.  Although, during the race, contact between the two riders was made forcing Gibernau wide and into the gravel it was deemed fair and no appeal was launched.

In 2006, Gibernau replaced Carlos Checa on the factory Ducati, where he went onto to impress the team with his point scoring, often being faster than his team-mate Loris Capirossi.  At the seventh round at Catalunya his career took a turn for the worse when he had a terrifying crash at the first corner of the Barcelona track.  As his team-mate, Capirossi,  moved left to go around traffic he moved across in front of Gibernau making contact with the front brake lever, which locked Gibernau’s front wheel, sending the Spanish rider’s machine flipping end over end, narrowly missing an unconscious Gibernau on landing.  It caused chaos as six other riders ran into the gravel, five bikes were wrecked and three of the riders ended up in hospital and the race was stopped.  Unbelievably, Gibernau’s ambulance was involved in an accident on the way to the hospital when it hit a bus, which fortunately caused no further injuries to the rider.  Gibernau suffered concussion and a broken bone in his hand and re-broke his collarbone.  He returned to racing after missing the Brno round but at the penultimate race, Casey Stoner crashed in front of him leaving him with nowhere to go and he too crashed braking the fifth metacarpal in his hand and causing further injuries to his healing collarbone.

Gibernau lost his ride in 2006 when he was replaced by Casey Stoner for the 2007 season alongside Capirossi.  He was offered a ride with the Kawasaki team but decided to retire from MotoGP.

Here is a clip to show just how impressive Sete Gibernau was, let’s hope to see more of this sort of riding in 2009.