VR46 Ducati<\/a> rider\u2019s weekend began with 16th in a rain-hit Friday practice, followed by 13th in qualifying.\u00a0<\/p>\nA clutch issue at the start of Saturday\u2019s Sprint dropped him down the order, before a \u201cstrange\u201d front-end feeling led to a crash at mid-distance while outside the points.<\/p>\n
There was little improvement in Sunday\u2019s grand prix, with di Giannantonio slipping to 17th early on and making up just one spot, when Tech3 KTM\u2019s Enea Bastianini fell.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He finished 24.729s behind winner Marc Marquez and over 20s behind the other GP25 Ducati of Francesco Bagnaia in fourth.<\/p>\n
Fabio di Giannantonio refuses to hide behind ‘excuses’<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely [a tough weekend],\u201d di Giannantonio admitted. \u201cLet\u2019s get straight to the point. I don\u2019t want to find excuses. For sure, my feeling with the bike was not fantastic. But I want to take all the responsibility because I think the rider is the leader of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been much more precise in my career than this weekend. Maybe it\u2019s because of the conditions and everything, but I just want to say it\u2019s my responsibility that we didn\u2019t have the package to fight today and overall in the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo a pity. But we have a lot of time now to regroup, refocus and work on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brno round was the fourth race in five weekends and the twelfth of the season, but the Italian refused to blame fatigue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to be objective and I never want to find things outside of my control,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the other riders are in the same boat. So I have to be better than the others. And I haven\u2019t done it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if the front-end issues in the grand prix were similar to those that caused his Sprint crash, di Giannantonio said:<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say we had a bit of bad luck yesterday. It happened a particular thing, that I cannot say, but maybe it could have helped us to have done a proper Sprint, to understand better that we were in the wrong direction. But I had to sort it out a little earlier anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the sharp contrast from his recent form – having finished in the top six in at least one race during the previous five rounds – di Giannantonio insisted the disappointing Czech showing hasn\u2019t dented his confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that I\u2019m not in top shape or something,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a MotoGP weekend, you have to focus on many things – riding and giving feedback to the team. In today\u2019s MotoGP, where a tenth makes the difference between 1st and 10th, you have to be really precise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what\u2019s changed compared to Sachsenring. We know exactly what we have to do to restart the season. It\u2019s just been an off weekend for me and for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to the summer break, di Giannantonio said he\u2019ll switch off and return refreshed at the Red Bull Ring in mid-August.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess the good thing is that there is also life apart from racing,\u201d he smiled. \u201cI will enjoy the free time with my family. I want to go on holiday with my girlfriend. I want to visit my grandfather.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I will absolutely spend a really good break – and try to be the best Diggia possible for restarting the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team-mate Franco Morbidelli was sidelined from the Czech weekend due to a shoulder injury in Germany.<\/p>\n
The VR46 duo have both now slipped behind Aprilia\u2019s Marco Bezzecchi for fourth in the world championship, with ten rounds to go.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fabio di Giannantonio was unable to maintain the momentum from his front-running performance at the Sachsenring as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,15118,806,805,803,804,15119,85],"class_list":["post-13512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fabio-di-giannantonio","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-pertamina-enduro-vr46-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}