Moto3, Matteo Bertelle to hell and back: "On the last lap I started to cry"

Great emotion for Matteo Bertelle, who at Le Mans returns to the Moto3 podium after a very difficult year.

In April 2025, shortly after his first Moto3 podium, Matteo Bertelle suffered a serious injury that heavily impacted his season. In fact, it even seemed like his career was in doubt... A little over a year later, we find him back on the podium at the French Grand Prix. Conditions were unusual, with rain turning everything upside down, but that doesn’t diminish what happened at Le Mans. For the Padua native from LevelUp MTA, it’s clearly a very special and meaningful result, one that allowed him to capitalize on the positive signs seen over the past few GPs. He’s not at his best yet—he admits it himself—but there has been progress.

It took a long time to get back in shape, but Matteo Bertelle got his revenge. "On the last lap I started to cry," he told motogp.com at the end of the Grand Prix at Le Mans. "The feeling with the bike was really good. It was a very strange race, it was the first time on the wet this weekend, but the team prepared an incredible bike for me." There was also a penalty, which didn’t slow him down too much. "I cut Turn 8, but I had great pace and managed to recover."

He’s over the moon with emotion, especially after what happened last year. "It’s been a long time since the podium at COTA, but this is a different podium, in the wet. The most important thing, though, is that we’re increasingly competitive and we must keep going race by race." It’s been a long and difficult recovery. "Last year maybe I came back a bit too soon," he admitted. "But I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t be racing this year. I gave it my all and tried to recover as much as possible." Is Matteo Bertelle back to who he was at the start of 2025? "No, I still have to fix a few small things, but we’re on the right track."

If you like the content from our news outlet, you can select it as your preferred source by clicking HERE