Fabio Di Giannantonio hopes to have found a working basis with the VR46 team this Friday that will serve them for 2026.
Neck and neck with his teammate Franco Morbidelli for third place in the championship, Fabio DiGiannantonio is undoubtedly keen to achieve the best possible results in the last two Grands Prix of the year in order to finish ahead of him. Number 49 has had a rollercoaster season and experienced it again during the overseas tour with top 10 finishes in Indonesia and Malaysia, a podium in Australia, and a GP outside the top 10 in Japan.
For several months now, he has been criticizing the way he and the VR46 team work on Fridays, believing it was too scattered and detrimental to the rest of the Grand Prix. This weekend, they tried a new approach, and it paid off. Despite finishing 12th in FP1 this morning, he managed to qualify directly for Q2 by setting the seventh fastest time in Practice this afternoon.
While he acknowledges that they will still need to try this approach under different conditions, By Giannantonio hopes this is a new starting point for 2026. "I feel things have improved because we adopted a different working method to tackle problems, and everything went better.", did he declare.
“I can’t confirm that the methodology is the right one because it would require different conditions, but after a year of working together, this is the first milestone we’ve reached with the team and it could be the foundation from which to build for next year. The progress isn’t just technical; it’s also internal. This allows us to achieve results more quickly because we understand things faster.”
“The goal was to get into Q2, so I think we did a really good job. I set a good time despite the difficult conditions. I'm also close to Márquez, only three and a half tenths behind. It's difficult to understand the tires. The ones I thought would be effective didn't work well in these conditions, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow to identify the right ones.”
Results of the Portuguese Grand Prix Practice :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
