It is plain that the end of the season is drawing near as the Silly Season rumours just keep on getting sillier. The latest one concerns the “retired” Sete Gibernau.
With Marco Melandri’s run of better form over the last couple of races, it now seems certain that he will see out his contract with Ducati till the end of the year. This has been a bitter blow to Gibernau who had tested extensively with Ducati and to whom some people attribute the upsurge in performance of the GP8 in the latter half of the season.
With Melandri being widely expected to be dumped after Brno, Gibernau and his supporters were hoping that he would be asked to fill in for the rest of 2008 with a view to a full-time seat in 2009.
Of course they were dreaming. As if the team was going to hire a 36 years old has-been.
Now, however, the Spanish press is now in a feeding frenzy with the suggestion that Ducati are going to make available a 5th GP9 for Gibernau to ride next year under the umbrella of the Onde Team, which presently runs Pablo Nieto and Pedro de la Rosa in the 125cc class.
But, with Nieto turning 27 later this year and being unable, because of this, to return to the 125cc class, the team will first look at how to accommodate him. Why? Because he is a Nieto. Although they plainly won’t take him straight to MotoGp, the chances are that they will expand the team to include a 250 for Nieto to ride.
If they decide to do this, they plainly won’t have the money to fund a MotoGp effort as well, especially since Onde is predominantly a commercial construction company suffering heavily at the expense of a huge downturn in the industry in Spain at the moment.
No, I somehow think that anyone who is expecting to see the surly Spaniard back on a MotoGp bike any time soon had better not hold their breath.
