Melandri going green?

Tue 19 Aug, 05:14 PM

Marco Melandri expected to ride for Kawasaki during the 2009 MotoGP season.

Crash.net understands that Marco Melandri is increasingly likely to ride for Kawasaki in MotoGP next season, but that no deal has yet been done.

Whilst negotiations between Melandri and Kawasaki are a long way down the line, with both team and rider happy with the proposal on offer, the new partnership still needs to be discussed at Kawasaki's headquarters in Japan before it can be finalised. That process is now ongoing.

Melandri, whose 2008 move to the factory Ducati team has yielded just two top ten finishes from twelve race starts, was first linked with Team Green earlier in the year, when it seemed likely that he would leave Ducati midway through a desperately disappointing season.

That switch to a third ZX-RR never materialised, and Melandri - whose only other option was to sit out the remainder of the season - soon stated his intention to see out the rest of the year with Ducati, although the second year of his contract was annulled by mutual consent.

In recent weeks, Melandri's 2009 destination seemed to have swung in favour of a return to the satellite Honda Gresini outfit - with whom Melandri took all five of his MotoGP race wins and finished second in the 2005 world championship.

But Melandri now looks on course to retain factory MotoGP status by riding alongside John Hopkins at Kawasaki in 2009, at the expense of Antony West.

Kawasaki, the only MotoGP manufacturer yet to win a race since the switch to four-stroke machinery in 2002, has long stated its determination to field two 'proven' front-running riders.