After several months of a storm, which he provoked with a furtive gesture against his opponent during a highly tense Moto2 San Marino Grand Prix, Roman Fenati will return to the track. Destined to be criticized and ostracized from pilot society by most of his peers, shocked by this maneuver against Stefano manzi who saw, at 217 km/h, a foreign hand activate the front brake of his motorcycle, “Fenny5” was first convinced that his career was over and that the world was decidedly unlivable. But here it is again. And it is an issue at the same time as the symbol of an era.
fenati will take over the Moto3 collar on February 21 within a Snipers team which had fired him after this incident which will go down in history. He will thus have served his license suspension. And he will find a team and an environment that he left on bad terms. The turnaround does not lack salt. The Italian is therefore a challenge for a Grand Prix world which will want, through him, to show that he knows how to demonstrate leniency and pedagogy. And that he can save the most lost souls.
But the case fenati, it is also the symbol of an era marked by the power of social networks. In the columns of Trademarks, he tells : " after the race, management listened to me and everything seemed settled. With Manzi we explained ourselves, we shook hands. I apologized and was disqualified for two races as punishment. Everything else from my firing to losing my license was initiated by social media. This is a court that rendered its decision much more quickly than the real one. Social media drove the nails in my coffin ».
« They condemned me without appeal ". But it also went further: “ They threatened to kill me. People who worked at the family hardware store received phone calls and threats. They had tears in their eyes. Everyone can make mistakes, I'm not a saint. But in racing, adrenaline can be a mitigating circumstance. Anyone who sends messages from their couch doesn't have this excuse. It has become fashionable to insult me. Still on Instagram, someone harasses me every week. I don't answer. My family and friends never gave up on me ».
