Having fallen far down the standings since the start of the weekend, Fabio Di Giannantonio made a solid comeback in the sprint race and hopes to have managed to resolve what was wrong with his Ducati.
After a thunderous start to the season, Fabio Di Giannantonio has encountered more difficulties since the Spanish Grand Prix 15 days ago. The scenario repeated itself at Le Mans this weekend, with his first day ending in 18th place due to a significant lack of feeling with the front of his Ducati. Forced to go through Q1, he was unable to save himself and only qualified in 17th place.
The Italian rider, however, made a very good start in the sprint race and gained four positions, before moving into the top 10 on the third lap. He spent most of the race in ninth place, before managing to overtake Álex Rins with two laps to go, then benefiting from Pedro Acosta's mistake on the final lap to finish seventh.
With ten places gained in 13 laps, Di Giannantonio was satisfied with his race, even if this result is obviously far from his objective and what he has shown since the start of the season.
"It's certain that being so far behind the leaders is not our place.", he said during his debriefing. "Today's position isn't great, but we're heading in the right direction. The sprint race was good; I didn't expect to be so close to third in terms of pace. We made a pretty good change on the bike and that helped a lot, but we're still missing something if we want to fight for the win."
"I've made pretty good progress since yesterday, but the other guys have moved up a level, so this weekend we find ourselves a little behind. We're making progress in understanding our base setup, which is what we've been lacking in the last few races, even when we've had good results."
The VR46 driver is not fazed by the risk of rain tomorrow and instead sees it as an opportunity for a good result now that he and his team seem to have understood the reason for his lack of performance. "It's part of the game that sometimes everything isn't clear, you just have to work to get back on track. You always have to understand how you can improve and today we understood that, so let's hope it works tomorrow, even if the conditions might be a bit tricky. That could also be a good card to play for us.", he added.
French GP sprint race results :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
