FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO SAYS ONE OF HIS DUCATIS IS COSTING HIM PACE AT VR46

Fabio Di Giannantonio says VR46 has been forced to work through a frustrating Ducati problem that has left him effectively relying on just one machine for several races. Speaking during Friday at the San Marino Grand Prix at Misano, the Italian reported that while he was pleased with the pace he could extract, the team’s second bike has been consistently off the mark.

Di Giannantonio described a strong opening day, saying: “Yeah, well in terms of feeling and performance, I think we've done a really good job because, at the end we were fast on the softs, we were fast on the mediums.” He ended the session fourth overall on his 2026-spec Ducati, but he stressed that the result came with a major compromise: “A pity that we still have only one bike; with the other bikes still the feeling is not there.”

The issue, according to Di Giannantonio, is not a small setup difference. He explained that the alternative Ducati is “like one second more off the pace,” adding that the problem has persisted for “three races now” in which he has “only use[d] one bike.” With the second motorcycle not matching the standard one, he said the normal process of comparing changes becomes difficult, which slows down development: “So I'm really slow on the work because I cannot do comparisons; I just have to use mine and do small changes if I want to, because if I want to come back I need to be really fast.”

Di Giannantonio also pointed to how long the situation has been dragging on. He said it began “since Silverstone,” clarifying that it was “actually since Silverstone” rather than later. Since then, the team has tried to address the situation by changing parts and investigating what could be wrong, but he believes the bike still “is not working normally.” He said: “So we are changing pieces, trying to understand what's happening, but still it's not really there.”

The VR46 rider said the team had altered the motorcycle extensively after his crashes at the Sachsenring, but the underlying problem did not disappear. “Since Sachsenring, it happened - well, actually since Silverstone. But we changed everything potentially damaged from Sachsenring crashes, but still the bike is not working normally, so we still don't know. I thought that we knew, but we don’t.”

He further linked the troublesome machine to an earlier incident, stating that the bike causing the performance gap was also the one he crashed on at Aragon. “I said in Aragon too that our weekend was not that linear and we were not able to try things and to take risks,” he recalled. “I said that I wanted to take more risks on the set-up and on the changes, but finally I couldn't.”

Di Giannantonio then returned to the core description of the fault, saying the problematic motorcycle is “the one that I crashed Friday morning in Aragon; the bike is really strange, so at the moment it's slowing us a little bit.” Despite that, he made clear he was still happy with the day’s outcome because it proved he could be quick on the bike that is working properly: “For this, I'm really happy that we are fast, at least.”

Overall, Di Giannantonio’s message from Misano was a mix of optimism and urgency: he can deliver strong results when he has access to the correct Ducati, but the team’s inability to restore the second bike to the same level has limited his ability to experiment freely and has kept development constrained by the lack of meaningful comparisons.