– In recent weekends, Fabio Di Giannantonio and his VR46 team faced a mystery. Because he only had a good feeling and was fast with one of his two Ducatis. The second motorcycle did not work and “Diggia” called it a “demon bike”.
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“Honestly,” Di Giannantonio said recently in Misano, “it’s now three races where I only use one motorcycle because the other motorcycle is about a second or more slower.”
“So we swap parts and try to understand what’s going on, but it’s still not really right. That’s why I’m really slow with the work because I can’t make comparisons.”
Because the Italian could only work on his number 1 motorcycle. When a rider is out on the track during practice, usually the setup is changed on the second motorcycle.
When the rider returns to the box, he goes back out on the track with the second motorcycle and checks if the changes provide a better feeling. Di Giannantonio was not able to do that recently.
“This has happened since Sachsenring, actually since Silverstone, but we have replaced everything that might have been damaged by the crashes at Sachsenring.”
“But the motorcycle still doesn’t work normally, so yes, we still don’t know. I thought we knew, but we don’t. That’s why I also said in Aragon that our weekend was not so straightforward.”
“We were not able to try things out and take risks. If you remember, I said that I wanted to take more risks with the setup and changes, but apparently I couldn’t.”
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“The motorcycle is also the one I crashed with on Friday morning in Aragon. The motorcycle is really strange, so it is holding us back a bit at the moment. But that’s why I’m really happy that at least we are fast.”
During the race weekend in Misano, progress was still made with the problematic motorcycle. On Saturday, Di Giannantonio had a somewhat better feeling with it again.
“It looks like the demon motorcycle is slowly working normally again. I used it Saturday morning, I was quite satisfied with the pace, so everything is going better at the moment, fortunately.”
Top results have been missing for Di Giannantonio in recent weeks, however. At Sachsenring he took third place in the sprint but crashed early in the Grand Prix.
In Silverstone he was fifth in the sprint and sixth in the Grand Prix, in Aragon Di Giannantonio crashed in the sprint and was seventh in the Grand Prix. Most recently in Misano he was fourth in the sprint and seventh in the Grand Prix.
At the same time, Ducati factory rider Marc Marquez won both races in Aragon and Misano. “Marc is doing an incredible job, of course Marc is Marc,” Di Giannantonio says about this comparison.
“But it also seems that the development he is driving forward is better than ours, so we have to improve, we have to learn and we have to try to get better.” In the world championship, Di Giannantonio’s deficit to Marquez has grown to 51 points.
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