Aprilia happy to convince Marco Melandri to make MotoGP switch

Aprilia boss Romano Albesiano has spoken of his delight at convincing experienced Italian Marco Melandri to make a shock return to the MotoGP world championship in 2015.

Melandri will return to MotoGP for the first time since 2010 next season and he will partner Spaniard Alvaro Bautista in Aprilia’s factory effort that will be run by ex-Honda satellite team boss Fausto Gresini.

The former 250GP world champion appeared reluctant to make a premier class return and favoured remaining in World Superbikes where he has raced for Yamaha, BMW and Aprilia since 2011.

But after lengthy talks with Aprilia, the 32-year-old decided to accept the Noale factory’s MotoGP offer and Albesiano told MCN: “We have to understand that Marco made a big decision some years ago for his career to come from MotoGP to World Superbikes and now we proposed him to do the opposite and it is not easy for a rider to make this kind of move. He had to think a lot about it and we offered him the two options to move to MotoGP and also to stay in World Superbikes. But in the end we succeeded in convincing him to come to MotoGP because the key point is we want the best results in the top class.”