Fabio Di Giannantonio managed to secure tenth place in the Portuguese MotoGP Grand Prix, but he was dissatisfied with the result. The Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider believes he could have achieved more, being closer to the top five, were it not for a mistake made just before the race.
The Italian told the press that he felt encouraged and optimistic after the warm-up: ‘In the warm-up I was quite happy with the step that we made with the bike – the set-up of the bike was really good. So we planned to do quite a good come back in the race We thought finishing close to top five would be possible, like sixth or seventh position, because the pace was there and the feeling was also there’.
However, according to Di Giannantonio, a mistake affected his entire performance: ‘Then we made a little mistake before the race. When we started the race for sure I didn’t know, but at the end of the race I knew. After three laps wasn’t possible to push harder than I was doing. It was really though to push and I had just to stay calm and finish the race. My race was quite finished from the beginning’.
The #49 then said: ‘Even if it’s never good to say, for sure, and I’m happy that nobody got injured, but we’ve been lucky that some riders crashed, so we were in the top ten. But I think it’s not what we deserved with our potential in the warm-up’.
Asked to elaborate on the mistake, Di Giannantonio replied: ‘It was just a little mistake, unfortunately this little mistake costs a lot in MotoGP, so it wasn’t possible to recover riding’.