“That is what I thought when I met Fausto Gresini for the first time. I had been offered other opportunities to enter the world of motorcycle racing previously but I was never fully convinced when it came to taking the plunge.
As soon as I shook hands with Fausto I realised that we had an instant understanding and that we could work well together. Professionalism is not something that comes by chance: it comes through hard work, through having concern for others and the instinct to predict change and being able to move with the times. They are all characteristics I appreciate in my partners and characteristics I also see in every single person who works with Fausto.
For this reason San Carlo decided to embrace this project a couple of years ago and will continue to do so this season.
The San Carlo Honda Gresini team has become a joint force that is evolving over time and that is encountering various areas of mutual understanding as well as being two very Italian entities.
That last point has even more relevance this year and is an extra reason to work together. For the first time in many years two Italian riders will compete together in MotoGP for an Italian team. This hadn’t happened since 1982, with Team Gallina.
For such a proudly patriotic brand as San Carlo it is nice to be able to put a true flavour of Italy out on the track.
The riders competing for us this year in MotoGP, as well as being World Champions in their own right, are two open and honest guys, firmly rooted in the healthy values of racing: two great characters who I am sure will give us plenty to enjoy both through their personalities off the track and their professionalism on it.”
The San Carlo Group boasts 75 years of purely Italian history. In 1936 Francesco Vitaloni opened the “Rosticceria San Carlo” on Via Lecco 18, Milan, named after the nearby church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto. The business soon became well known for its revolutionary speciality, “patatine croccanti” (“crunchy chips”), which they delivered daily to local bakeries and bars. Within a few years production had escalated from twenty kilos a day to much higher quantities, convincing Signor Vitaloni to move his base to Greco in 1940, changing the company name to “San Carlo … le patatine”. In 1970 it became “San Carlo Gruppo Alimentare S.p.A.” with its base on Via Turati. Under the guidance of current President Alberto Vitaloni production began to flourish and they currently turn out 100 tonnes of potato-based products every day (alongside a wide range of other products). They have 10 factories, 2500 workers, 170 warehouses, 1300 outlets and a fleet of trucks that guarantee a distribution network that covers the entire country. San Carlo is the national market leader in potato-based products and constantly moves with development and new ideas.
From 2006 a new marketing strategy was introduced that involves the sponsorship of sports teams and major competitions. Sport has always been a vehicle for positive values, a symbol of great excitement and it carries the message that goals can be achieved through hard work and daily effort. Sport is also good for the health, especially of young people.
The company, which always keeps an eye out for the health of its consumers, is supporting the HIRP (Honda Italia Racing Project) for the third year with the San Carlo Junior team, which has the aim of introducing kids between the ages of 9 and 13 into the world of motorcycle racing through a genuine academy system run and managed by Gresini in collaboration with the Italian Motorcycling Federation and Honda.
Finally, this year San Carlo will also be lending its support to the Clinica Mobile run by Dr Claudio Costa: the two mobile hospital units with an incredibly efficient and well prepared medical teams on board that look after the riders in both MotoGP and Superbike.
It promises to be a particularly intense season and our hopes are high for a year of extreme and intense excitement. We are sure that through the hard work of everybody in the team and the skill of our two riders there will be no shortage of adrenaline!
We’ll see you at the track, cheering for Marco & Marco!
Alberto Vitaloni
