Since the start of the 2022 MotoGP season, Gresini Racing’s Fabio Di Giannantonio has gone largely unnoticed.
That’s in part due to a strong start to the season from fellow Ducati rookie Marco Bezzecchi and in part due to the incredible successes of Di Giannantonio’s Gresini team-mate Enea Bastianini, himself only in his second year in the championship but already a three-time 2022 race-winner after seven rounds.
But when things finally came together for 23-year-old Italian Di Giannantonio at home at Mugello on Saturday, he propelled himself into his own fairytale story.
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He mastered the Tuscan track in damp conditions to fly through Q1 as pacesetter and then take his first pole position in the premier class, demoting Bezzecchi to second place in the process.
“What can I say?” Di Giannantonio said after a stunning performance on slick tyres and a damp track.
“It’s something incredible, because you are here in Mugello where you are expected to do a good result in front of all of the people who have come to see you at your home race, and already riding a Ducati MotoGP bike in Mugello is something incredible.
“And then to take pole position is something else. One of the dreams of my life has been to be on the top of a grid in MotoGP and today we achieved this, so it is incredible.”
Making the result even more special for him is that it comes after a difficult start to his rookie season. His performances have been so low key that his struggles have been gone largely unseen, but he’s been distinctly on the back foot compared to the other rookies. Thirteenth last time out in France is his best result, and only points finish, so far.
Di Giannantonio was struck down with food poisoning at the first pre-season test of 2022 at Sepang back in February and missed the final two days in Malaysia, before flying directly to Indonesia’s new Mandalika Bay track for three more days, where the after-effects of his illness continued to haunt him.
As a result, he believes that he started the season at a considerable disadvantage to his rivals – a stumbling block that he says he finally overcame earlier this month at MotoGP’s first one-day test of the year following the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez.
“For sure at the beginning of the year I found that losing those two days really cost me, some kilometres on the bike and some kilometres to really adjust my riding style for the bike,” he explained.
“It was tough, let’s say. But when we were going to the races the gap started to close and my team and I understood much better the way to perform.
“I think we did a good step from the Jerez race but especially in the Jerez test, where we tried something new and it worked for me.
“We kept it in Le Mans, and then here also it’s working, so I think we’re doing the right steps to every week be closer and closer to the top.”
Not so much coming to the Gresini team this year as being promoted within it, Di Giannantonio is very much a product of the late Fausto Gresini’s unofficial academy system – and a rider that the double 125cc world champion had already picked out for his new MotoGP effort before he tragically succumbed to COVID-19 last year.
First joining Gresini in Moto3 in 2015 as a mid-season injury replacement and working his way up through the team’s ranks since then, Saturday’s qualifying triumph comes as something of the culmination of his journey with the team, at least to date – a fairytale that might not yet be over even as he tempers his own expectations.
“Honestly for tomorrow it’s a question mark,” he admitted in the front row press conference on Saturday afternoon. “Yeah, we are on top, but to be honest we do not have the pace to win the race for sure.
“We will try to enjoy the race, to fight in the first laps, and then to see what happens.
“We have the warm-up session to better understand what our place is, but to be honest I arrived here just to reconfirm the good performance of Le Mans. To reconfirm that would be quite good for me.”
