If you’ve been following Grand Prix racing for a number of years, many of you may remember Franco Battaini. The Italian rider who presently races in the Italian Supersport series, may become Ducati’s new test rider, replacing the recently promoted Vitto Guareschi.

Battaini used to race in the 250cc GP Championship and in 2005 was in MotoGP with the doomed Blata-WCM team and then did a few races in WSBK’s

The Italian rider has already ‘secretly’ tested Casey Stoner’s Ducati at the Mugello racetrack last October doing 18 laps and Battiani describes the peformance of Desmosedici in that occasion as ‘impressive’ despite the bad weather that limited his testing will now get a second opportunity to try the bike at Jerez next month.

“Guareschi is my friend and I’ve known him for years and he’s the one that talked to Ducati about me and they gave me the opportunity to test Stoner’s bike at the Mugello. It was an incredible experience, even for an expert rider like myself, but the test hasn’t sealed any deal.”

Continue reading: Franco Battaini to become Ducati's new Test Rider?

We revealed two weeks ago in another post that Ducati’s official test rider Vittoriano Guareschi had been promoted to play liaison between Filippo Preziosi and the Ducati riders and you saw Guareschi on the podium at Sepang next to Stoner.

The Italian started his career in the Italian 125 cc Sport Production Series with Cagiva and ended his professional racing career in 2001 after racing for Ducati in WSBK Championship finishing16th in the standings.

The iconic Guareschi whose distinctive hairstyle (his brother Gianfranco aka “il Guaro” has the same hairstyle and is also a motorcycle racer) is a favorite among Ducati fans and has a fan club on Facebook and excellent off track relationships with almost all of the Italian riders.

In this week’s number 34 issue of Motosprint, Guareschi gave his first interview to explain his new role in the team adding that he isn’t going to give up testing completely:

Continue reading: Vitto Guareschi talks about his new role in Ducati