After breaking through in 2008 with the MotoGP 250 class championship, Italy’s Marco Simoncelli has arrived on center stage, competing with the world’s premier motorcycle road racers on the MotoGP circuit. With Italian teammate Marco Melandri, Simoncelli runs the San Carlo Honda Gresini bike – a position Simoncelli worked hard his entire life to attain. A star racer on the Italian Minimoto Championship series from 1996 to 2000, Simoncelli’s two consecutive titles paved the way for him to move up to the 125cc class. And two years later, in 2002, Simoncelli would be crowned as the 125cc European champion.

In 2003 Simoncelli campaigned with the Matteoni Racing Team and was a consistent point producer in his rookie season on the MotoGP tour. The following year (’04), with Rauch Bravo, Simoncelli won his first Grand Prix on the rain-soaked circuit in Jerez. 2005 had the rising Italian star ranked in the top five of the 125cc class, afterwhich he moved up to the 250s in ’06, with his first career win in that class coming in 2008 at his home course in Mugello. Simoncelli would win the 250 class that year, and successfully defended that title in 2009 – battling Japanese racer Hiroshi Aoyama all the way through the final race of the season before placing 2nd overall.