Danilo Petrucci targeting UK WorldSBK return after “scary” Most crash

Danilo Petrucci is targeting a Donington Park return to WorldSBK after suffering “one of the worst” crashes of his career at the Czech Round in May.

Petrucci was forced to miss both Sunday races at Most after his Race 1 crash as well as the Aragon Round two weeks ago. The Italian suffered leg fractured in Most crash as well as ligament damage.

Although he’s not riding this weekend at the Emilia-Romagna WorldSBK round, Petrucci is present at Misano with his BMW and feels his recovery is going well.

“I’m doing good,” Danilo Petrucci said, speaking to WorldSBK.com on Friday at Misano.

“Sincerely, it was a big crash, one of the worst of my career, especially for the pain. I landed on my back, on my right leg, and then I tumble a lot, so I suffered a lot. 

“I had multiple damages around – not big ones, but especially two small fractures and some ligament and muscle damage, especially on the left leg; two big bruises, so they had to cut and remove all the blood. 

“I felt immediately the first 10 days really weak and couldn’t move, couldn’t sleep, so it’s been really hard. 

“Then, last 10 days I tried to work as hard as I could, trying to be fit for this race, but still I don’t bend completely the knees, so we decided to skip this race and focus on the next race.

“Maybe in Donington I will be at 100 per cent for the race.”

Petrucci explained that the crash happened when he tried to pass Axel Bassani at the start of Race 1.

“I had a good start,” he began. “Sincerely, in Most, we reset after Balaton, we started really from scratch from FP1, especially on the electronics side, and we were doing good.

“Qualifying was not our best, but sincerely third row was good. 

“The start was good. I was, let’s say, fighting with Bassani. 

“I decided to pass him, but when I started to be too aggressive the bike started to be more aggressive than me, and I was changing direction so there was a transfer of load and in the transition I switched from fourth [gear] to second, the bike started to pump, and it flipped me to the air. 

“It was really scary because in that moment I had the images of the riders going below me and then I just landed but from that moment I was just feeling a lot of pain on the left femur. 

“I thought the left femur was gone, I was scared to watch my legs because the pain in the first two hours was unbelievable, especially to lie down was really bad because I think I landed on my back, on my glute and my leg, so I was struggling a lot.”

Petrucci admitted that it was hard to be absent from the Aragon Round.

“Unfortunately, it was really hard to sit [during] Aragon watching the race from the sofa,” he said.

“I remember I was watching the race. When I was watching, there was the grid, and I was sweating like I was there in Aragon, but I was sitting on my sofa. It was really hard. 

“My brain was in Aragon but my body was on my sofa at home. 

“It has been really hard to watch the other guys racing, but fortunately Miguel [Oliveira, who also had to miss the Aragon Round through injury] is here this weekend and maybe from the next race we will be both again trying to be faster than we were.”