Lucio Pedercini (Team Pedercini Ducati RS 996) in the 2000 season behind Alessandro Gramigni (Valli Racing 391 Yamaha R7) in the first race in Assen – in the end the man driving for his own team with the number 11 landed in the place corresponding to his starting number. For more about the earlier years of WorldSBK, see our richly illustrated history.

Pedercini Racing before the start of the 2021 season with 30 years of racing

According to Wikipedia, Pedercini Racing was founded in 1993. However, the website of his team insists it was on 1992. Basically, the majority of the riders in the past millennium have been on the road for their own “team”, regardless of whether it is the motorcycle world championship or WorldSBK. There were even world champions such as Hermann Paul (mostly just called H. P.) Müller in the 250cc class among them in 1955 as the first of them. What is certain is that Pedercini drove on a Paton in the 500cc World Championship and was the only driver in the premier class. Strictly speaking, he was a private driver in 1992 and not team boss in his 1st Grand Prix season. Or simply Paton drivers, a Pedercini team is nowhere to be found in the records of earlier years, at least not in the smaller classes.

A Paton 500 – designed by the Italian Giusieppe Patoni and his compatriot Lino Tonti, from whose name the bike was christened. Later, V4 two-stroke engines were also created and Lucio was on the road in 1992 in his first GP season. However, the northern Italian from Volta Mantovana, south of Lake Garda, was not able to score points on his debut.

The years in the 500cc World Championship up to the Superbike World Championship
As far as Lucio Pedercini is concerned, the truth about his past or his team history may lie somewhere in the middle. From 1993 he rode a ROC Yamaha for five years, designed by Frenchman Serge Rosset, which is often around half of the starting grid. This is where the name Pedercini Racing appears for the first time, but with Lucio as the only driver and there was nobody else in the Grand Prix field who drove for this team. Except for 1996 when he was seventeenth in the World Cup, the points yield was single-digit and the placements were accordingly far behind, with two places 29 in the World Cup final accounts. And before this is forgotten, from 1994 a second Pedercini driver was effectively on board, which means that the word team was now also justified in terms of the number of drivers. Then it went to the WorldSBK, but also there in 1998 and 1999 initially as a one-man team in this category.

The TPR Outdo Pedercini Racing Team formed at the last minute with Sandro Cortese before the season kicked off in Phillip Island (Australia) at the end of February 2020. Third from the right, team principal Lucio Pedercini. The year of the Italian troops with an Italo-German driver was not a particularly good one.

A time with a lot of ups and downs for the Pedercini Racing Team

Lucio’s greatest success as rider was a 4th place in Phillip Island (Australia) in his 3rd year in the WSBK. The liaison with Ducati lasted exactly 10 years for the team based in Northern Italy with its long tradition. The names of the drivers were quite interesting and one of them was even German in 2006, Max Neukirchner. It was he, of all people, who changed teams in the middle of the season. As he was to explain to us later, this was mainly due to a few falls with technical causes, which is why he was ultimately forced to do so. Immediately afterwards, the best driver in his country drove a Suzuki in Assen in 6th place as well as never before this season. Two years later, Lucio Pedercini switched from the Reds to the Greens and his team has been on the Kawasaki ever since.

Max Neukirchner (Suzuki) in front of Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha) – without numerous crashes, mostly through no fault of his own, his career would definitely have been even more glorious than it was with 5th place in the World Championship in 2008, two victories and several other podium places. The interview with the German about his earlier years and the assessment of the 2021 season can be found on this page under “Interviews + TV”.

What can we expect from Pedercini Racing and its drivers in 2021?

With Loris Cresson and Samuele Cavalieri, the trees are unlikely to grow into the sky in the coming season. The Frenchman already gave his first guest appearance in the WorldSBK at the Autodromo do Estoril in Portugal last year. He finished twelfth in the WSSP 600 World Cup twice in 2018 and 2019. Just like for his rookie team-mate from Italy, reaching the points should already be seen as a success. In this respect, many observers were astonished that Lucio opted for two rookies as drivers for the second Corona year. The obvious explanation for this would be the dowry that these two pilots may be able to bring in, be it through their own sponsors or whatever. It will also be interesting to see what kind of bikes the troops will be at the start in Aragon. The assumption is that it will be the previous year’s models of the Kawasaki ZX-10RR.

Pedercini Racing newcomer Loris Cresson in Jerez de la Frontera on the rainy WSBK test day, on which the teams and drivers arrived in vain in the second half of January 2021. The WorldSBK people had never had as much bad luck as earlier this year in recent years.

>Aragon preview: see separate report on this page.

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© WorldSBK).