Last Monday, MotoGP had a test day in Jerez, where Fabio Di Giannantonio set the pace. The man from the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team hasn’t been fighting for top positions in this year’s Grand Prix races, but he reminded everyone that he also has the potential to be at the front. Currently, he’s seventh in the championship, never finishing outside the top ten in the main races.
The Italian spoke about his approach to the test: ‘As we know that the test is always a bit unrealistic for the grip level, the focus was to understand what a piece does, whatever it is – whether it is a different configuration of the shock, the forks or a new piece on the bike. It’s just about the comments, not about the lap time or whatever just to understand the characteristics of that piece to use or not in the next few rounds. So that was the approach that we had to this test – to remove all the things about the grip and other things’.
Asked if he has found the right base for his Ducati Desmosedici GP23, Di Giannantonio clarified that there were no changes to the setup: ‘We got a few issues, but they were not about the set-up – the set-up of the bike is really similar compared to the one we’re using now. We changed a few things, but not in the set-up itself, in other areas. But I think we’ve been fast in this round honestly. I’m happy about my start of the season’.
The rider added: ‘This weekend we’ve been quite fast in every moment of the weekend. I just missed the first two or three laps of the race because I was struggling a little bit with the rear grip. But then I was fast. The bike is quite fast compared to the start of the season’.