Having the Campionissimo as a half-brother is a huge advantage when you want to get into motorcycle racing. But is this certain? Is the big brother's celebrity a source of light or shadow? While his Moto2 team, Giovanni Cuzari's Forward Racing Team, has just been presented in Milan, let's take a look at Luca.
Son of Stefania Palma, the mother of Valentino Rossi, and Massimo Marini, Luca was born on August 10, 1997 in Urbino and started on minimotos, competing in the European Championship of the specialty in the Netherlands in 2004. He was then launched in 2008 in the transalpine Honda Junior Trophy, then in 2010 in the “Campionato Italiano Mini GP” with a four-stroke Honda 125 from Team Gresini. Still in the Italian CIV Championship, he finished fourth in the Moto3 category in 2013, competing in his first Grand Prix at Misano (qualified 29th, he fell during the first lap of the race, then last).
He then headed to Spain and the CEV Moto2014 in 3, within the Aspar team, with a Kalex-KTM. In 2015, he rode in Moto2 in CEV with the Pons team (Paginas Amarillas HP40) on a Kalex. Second in his third race, Marini finished fifth overall. Entered as a wild card during the Misano GP, he qualified 26th and finished 21st. The great Grand Prix adventure began as a permanent driver in 2016 at Forward Racing, directly in Moto2 without having gone through the Moto3 GPs, which is very rare. He finished the season 23rd, with tenth places at Le Mans and Mugello as his best qualifications, and a good sixth position in the race in Germany, followed by ninth in Malaysia.
“The biggest challenge for me is to get away from the situation of being Valentino Rossi's brother, believes Luca I don't want to get rid of him, because he is a part of me, but sometimes I want to be Luca Marini, not just his brother.
“When I was very young, I always went to watch races around the world with him. But the real reason I started racing was that one day I saw a track where kids were riding minibikes, and I wanted to try. From there I started my journey in this world. I think my first motorcycle was a ZSP minibike, which I must have started on when I was four years old.
“Sometimes I was helped by my brother, because being Valentino Rossi's brother helps, but I have always made a lot of sacrifices and I will have to make more in the future.
“The thing that made me most proud was my ideal lap* at Mugello this year. I was better than all the other drivers. During my best lap in qualifying, in the last corners, I was disrupted by some drivers and I couldn't do better, but on paper my ideal lap* was the first. I'm very happy about that, and I kept the time sheet in my room.
“Which driver do I want to be like? To me ! I want to be myself. »
*The ideal tour is the addition of part-times (example: T1 + T2 + T3 + T4 = “Ideal time”)
