DI GIANNANTONIO SAYS APRILIA IS ALREADY THE TOP FORCE AS DUCATI STRUGGLES WITH TYRE BALANCE

Fabio Di Giannantonio left Silverstone with solid results but an uneasy feeling about the competitiveness of his VR46 Ducati. The Italian finished fifth in the Sprint and sixth in the Grand Prix, saying he “did the maximum of what I thought was possible.” However, his race plan—built around a 20-lap distance—only worked halfway. “I tried to save the rear tyre as much as possible for the final. I did a good job with the rear tyre, but I overused the front tyre,” he explained after the race.

Di Giannantonio described a tyre problem that, in his view, has followed him throughout the season. “This happens since the start of the season in every race. I’ve been saying for a long time that we need to improve our package. It’s a good package, but at the moment we have too short a margin,” he said. He then outlined the trade-off he believes he is forced to manage: “If we push too much with the front tyre, the front goes at the end and our race is over. So to make the front do what it needs to do, we end up using the rear tyre too much. It’s difficult to manage.”

He pointed to how the balance flipped between the two sessions. On Sunday, he estimated the front end slid “ten to twelve times,” while the day before in the Sprint the situation was reversed: “The front was really good, but I destroyed the rear tyre completely.”

The tyre struggle fed into a broader message about the current order in MotoGP. Di Giannantonio noted that Aprilia has moved ahead of Ducati more than just at Silverstone. “At the moment we are the second force. The number one is Aprilia,” he said, adding that while they knew Aprilia would be strong at this track, “we saw a big gap.” He also stressed that the rival’s consistency is not new: Aprilia has been working at this level for around a year, and all four of its riders are now regularly fighting at the front. “We pop up in between sometimes, but at the moment we are one step back. That’s the truth,” he said.

Di Giannantonio rejected the idea that the gap is purely circuit-related. While Silverstone highlighted the difference most sharply, he suggested that other tracks could still allow Ducati to fight closer to the front. Still, his conclusion was clear: Aprilia holds an advantage over Ducati.

In the championship, Di Giannantonio remains fifth with 199 points, positioned as the top Ducati rider in the standings behind only Marc Marquez, who is the best-placed Ducati competitor by one point. Jorge Martin leads the championship, and Di Giannantonio is 41 points behind him. Behind him, the gap to Raul Fernandez is 15 points.