Fabio Di Giannantonio looked back on the crucial moments of his last race, recounting an incident that probably affected the outcome of the race. The Italian rider reported that he felt contact with another rider during the race, a collision that caused him to inadvertently shift into first gear, which partly hampered his progress.
Despite the setback, Di Giannantonio emphasised that he had nevertheless maintained a competitive race pace. The rider admitted he had hoped for a better result than the one he achieved, but his position on the track, stuck behind Ogura, prevented him from showing his full potential. “I had a good pace and was hoping for something better, but behind Ogura I couldn’t perform at 100 per cent,” said the rider, highlighting how managing the traffic on the track had affected his overall performance.
A particularly interesting part of Di Giannantonio’s statements concerns precisely the identification of the rider responsible for the collision he suffered during the race. The rider stated that he was not immediately certain that it was Marc Marquez, although he did come to that conclusion later on whilst analysing the sequence of events.
In support of this account, Di Giannantonio referred to the sprint at the start, emphasising how unlikely it was that the Spanish driver himself had caused the contact at that early stage of the race. “The sprint at the start? “It’s impossible for him to start like Marc,” he explained, suggesting that the incident in question probably took place later in the race, when the positions had settled and the battle for the points-scoring places had become fiercer.
The Italian rider’s comments paint a picture of a difficult race, spent juggling the technical difficulties caused by the collision whilst trying to maintain a competitive pace despite the obstacles encountered along the way. Having Ogura ahead of him made it even more difficult to fully exploit the bike’s potential, in a race situation already complicated by the earlier collision.
It now remains to be seen whether the circumstances of the incident will be analysed in greater depth by the race stewards or whether it will remain a matter of personal interpretation amongst the drivers involved. Di Giannantonio, for his part, has preferred to adopt a cautious approach in his statements, avoiding direct accusations whilst hinting at his own interpretation of the events that took place on the track during the race.
Written by Fabio Averna
Article produced by the AiSportNews newsroom with the support of artificial intelligence tools.