MotoGP™, like life itself, is full of challenges. There is a learning phase, like Free Practice for example, before it starts to get serious in qualifying and the races.
Nadia Padovani assumed her position within the sport in the most tragic of circumstances, stepping into her current role after the death of her husband Fausto Gresini. With her future, and the future of her four children, uncertain, Padovani was at a crossroads: leave Gresini Racing and risk the jobs of the many people who have worked so hard for them, or deal with the grief and carry on the mission she started with Fausto years ago.
“It was hard to take over the company,” says Nadia. “Psychologically, both me and the guys who work here were devastated. But I never thought of giving up, even in difficult times, because the urge to honour Fausto was always stronger than the urge to give up everything.”
When Nadia joined the company, she wanted to get to know every single person involved in Gresini Racing and drew on their experience to quickly learn the details and dynamics that would allow her to become a Team Principal capable of working her way up to the highest levels of the sport: “It was and is a great team effort,” she stresses.
True to her choice to continue the dream started by her husband in MotoGP™, Nadia tells of a pact she made with Fausto many years before: “When we got engaged when I was 20 years old and studying nursing, he was 26 and already a professional rider. We motivated each other so that we were both pushed to give the best of ourselves. At that time, I was studying hard to get good grades, and he was giving his all to win as many races as possible.”
Gresini Racing, which enters the 2022 Championship as an Independent Team for the first time after splitting from Aprilia, started the season off with a bang - Enea Bastianini and his GP21 took victory in Qatar. That result made Padovani the first female Team Manager to win in the premier class.
“That victory was a whirlwind of emotions. There was everything in those tears. Receiving compliments from other team owners was exciting and an immense pleasure,” she recalls emotionally about a night to remember in Lusail.
The pandemic has affected everybody’s life and, in these circumstances, Padovani has met others who, like her, have lost loved ones to COVID-19: “I have met women who have lived through a similar situation to mine,” she says, “and I have seen my despair reflected in their eyes; this pain has brought us together and we stay in touch. When they tell me that they think it's wonderful to see me react like this and that they are proud of me, it's fantastic because it gives me the strength to keep going.”
In the early 2000s, Padovani left her job as a nurse to devote herself entirely to raising her children, and it was also thanks to them that she decided to return to work: “I try to pass on the will to live to my children. I want to teach them that even in the face of such great pain you have to react, and I do my best to be a strong mother and make them proud of me.”
In just a few months Nadia's life has completely turned around: “I am not used to giving interviews and when I read that I am described as 'a great woman, a strong woman'... well, I feel like a normal woman. Everything has come very naturally to me, and perhaps other women who have suffered such an important loss find this strength, but in my case the big difference is the media exposure I face.”
Busy juggling contracts with manufacturers and sponsors, Nadia has embraced a new way of life: “I think what my husband did gives me a lot of strength. I've never travelled before, but now I take planes, travel the world and follow my family at the same time.”
Nadia also shares her work with her sons Lorenzo and Luca, and it is Agnese and Alice who notice her absence the most, but they are also her most ardent supporters: “When I came back from Qatar, they prepared a surprise party for me and we had a wonderful evening. Every time I leave it's hard to leave my daughters, but then I look at them and they give me so much strength and courage that they motivate me to do my best to be a reference for them.”
Among the many details that need to be defined in a team, Nadia wanted to unite two worlds often considered distant: motorcycle racing and femininity. “I have always liked Elisabetta Franchi's style and I admire her a lot. So when I joined the company I thought it would be great to work with her because I wanted our grid-girls to be refined and elegant.” And when I met Elisabetta it was as if we had known each other forever.
Nadia Padovani and Elisabetta Franchi are two women with many characteristics in common, one above all: their irrepressible desire to embrace the beauty of life even after personal drama, transforming the end into rebirth. “There was a great understanding with Elisabetta from the very first moment and she even decided to come to Qatar with her family to watch the first Grand Prix of the year.”
And under the lights of the Lusail International Circuit, a golden chapter of history was written: “It was fantastic to share the joy of victory with Elisabetta because she too had lived through a terrible drama, but in spite of that, she reacted by growing her brand and also experiencing moments of deep satisfaction.”
There is one constant in Nadia's life: caring for others. First she did it with her patients, then with her children and now with Gresini Racing. A commitment with which she nurtures the future of women who, thanks to her, have one more reason to remember that giving up is a possibility, but so is reacting.