Goodbye BMW and World Superbike: Danilo Petrucci in Tears at Jerez

It’s not ending the way he would have wanted, but Petrux is a fighter who has earned respect in WorldSBK: his 2027 plans are still up in the air.

In 2025, he came close to finishing the championship in third place, missing out only because of an injury. In 2026, he sits a disappointing seventeenth in the overall Superbike standings. Danilo Petrucci had been determined to join a factory team and believed he could write a great story with BMW, while knowing he would not be able to replicate what Toprak Razgatlioglu had achieved. For various reasons, he hasn’t managed it, and the Jerez round marks his last both with the team and in the series. Indeed, the possibility of remaining on the grid with a Ducati Panigale V4 R from the Go Eleven team seems to have fallen through. The team will soon choose between Alessandro Delbianco and Albert Arenas to partner the confirmed Lorenzo Baldassarri.

Petrux would love to bring his WorldSBK career to a positive end, but things have not gone well for him in Spain. He could manage no better than 15th in Superpole and scored no points in Race 1, crossing the line in seventeenth. It was a bitter Saturday that offers little hope ahead of the Superpole Race and Race 2, although the rider from Terni will still do his best to put in respectable performances.

At the end of the day, he went up to the podium area with the ROKiT BMW Motorrad team to greet the fans before competing in his final Sunday as a World Superbike rider. Petrucci was overcome with emotion and shed a few tears, letting it all out before tackling his final laps aboard the M 1000 RR.

It had seemed he might have the chance to ride an M 1000 RR in 2027 as well, but the prospect of racing for the OrangeCat team in the MotoAmerica Superbike championship now appears to have fallen through. However, a return to the US remains an option, as the rider from Umbria has been in contact with the Attack Performance team. The World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) is another possibility worth considering, since his experiences in 2022 and 2025 have stayed close to his heart.

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