Please click on the above image to view it larger.

After some pretty tough luck as one of the most promising young MotoGP riders, Marco Melandri is back in the premier class. Remember this guy sliding around Phillip Island? A former 250cc World Champion (2002), Melandri was one of those to win against Rossi, Pedrosa and Stoner before the Alien Dry Race Win phenomenon began in 2007.

Had Melandri found his way onto a factory Honda or Yamaha instead of signing with Ducati in 2008, he might have made a difference in the Dry Race Wins category.

After a soul- and confidence-crushing season at Ducati, he joined the orphaned Hayate Kawasaki team in 2009 on a bike that looks oddly similar to the April on which he’ll return to MotoGP in 2015.

I have a soft spot for Melandri for several reasons, one of them being that he was one of, if not the very, first interviews I did in MotoGP. I’d been help up by something scheduled right before I was supposed to talk to him – I can’t recall what made me late, but late I was. Very professional, to be late for an interview with a MotoGP rider!

But he was very cool about it as I apologized to him and the Hayate press officer. I can think of a couple of other MotoGP riders who would not have been so generous in the same situation.

If the 2015 Aprilia MotoGP bike keeps the same or similar red on black livery, it will be eerily familiar for me seeing Marco back in MotoGP, given that I think of him most easily on the Hayate. And I sure hope his new Italian MotoGP bike goes better than his previous one.

Photograph: ©2009 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved