VR46 Ducati MotoGP rider Fabio Di Giannantonio says he had \u201cthe Avenger feeling\u201d on his way to a podium at the Australian Grand Prix despite battling a fever.<\/p>\n
The Italian had been fast throughout the Phillip Island weekend and looked like a big victory threat after Friday\u2019s practice running.<\/p>\n
But his weekend was complicated by a poor qualifying performance that left him 10th, while on Sunday he was forced to battle a fever that left him \u201creally sick\u201d on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Fabio Di Giannantonio<\/a> rallied to finish second in the grand prix behind first-time winner Raul Fernandez<\/a> for his third podium of the season and earn top Ducati honours on his VR46<\/a>-run GP25.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did an amazing job last week in the preparation of the weekend, because the team did a lot of analysis and studying, and understood what the best package could be for us to race with here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the key to making this kind of performance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bittersweet feeling because we know that we ruined our chances to make a possible win after qualifying.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it was out of our control, so it is like this. For sure, the fever didn\u2019t help at all.<\/p>\n \u201cLast night I was really sick. I had to get the job done. We did an amazing race. I\u2019m so proud of the overtakes because it was not easy starting from P10.\u201d<\/p>\n Hollywood superstar provides \u201cextra motivation\u201d<\/p>\n Di Giannantonio received a visit from Hollywood superstar Chris Hemsworth on Sunday at Phillip Island.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n The Italian said he felt like he \u201cwas like a superhero\u201d during the visit, referencing Hemsworth\u2019s turn as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was \u201cextra motivation\u201d for the grand prix.<\/p>\n \u201cI was feeling the Avenger feeling, I was like a superhero with him in the garage,\u201d Di Giannantonio added.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was great to have him in the garage. It was definitely an extra motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VR46 Ducati MotoGP rider Fabio Di Giannantonio says he had \u201cthe Avenger feeling\u201d on his way to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17197,15118,806,805,803,804,15119,85],"class_list":["post-224872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ducati","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\/224872","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=224872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}