Di Giannantonio and his duel with Moreira: “I nearly killed myself trying to signal to him”

A podium finish after fighting back, and a moment that, judging by the story, could have ended much worse. Fabio Di Giannantonio finished third in the Australian Grand Prix Sprint, completing a Ducati 1-2-3, but the most vivid memory of his race is a gesture he made to Diogo Moreira amid the strong winds at Phillip Island.

The VR46 team rider joked about it, but the facts remain: as he tried to communicate with the LCR Honda rookie, the wind nearly threw him off his bike.

Di Giannantonio’s Sprint got off to a difficult start. A gust of wind caught him out on the first lap, dropping him down the order. From there, he began working his way back up over the 13 laps of the shorter race, eventually taking third behind the Márquez brothers. Marc won, while Alex finished second, opting not to attack his brother. As we reported in Alex Márquez and the overtake he never attempted on Marc: “The championship is at stake; the Sprint wasn’t worth the risk”, the risk was too great for the Gresini rider.

During his charge back through the field, Diggia found himself battling Moreira, who, in the Italian’s view, was riding very aggressively. To avoid both riders losing time in a constant back-and-forth for position, he tried to signal to the Brazilian to stay behind him.

“I had Moreira in front of me,” Di Giannantonio explained. “Every time you pass him, he passes you back. Even if he’s a second slower, he overtakes you again. I passed him at Turn 1 and thought, ‘I’ll signal for him to stay behind.’ You have no idea—I nearly killed myself trying to signal to him in the wind. My God. I think he was smart because, f***, I was going twice as fast. In theory, you should wait, follow, and then work your way back up. In the Sprint, he gives it everything.”

In the closing stages of the Sprint, the VR46 rider’s pace was among the strongest. Di Giannantonio thinks he could have closed in on the Márquez brothers in a longer race, while acknowledging that Marc was managing his pace after seeing that his title rival was out of contention. Jorge Martin had crashed, bringing his weekend to an end; find out more in Jorge Martin seriously injured, Australian GP over: the Aprilia rider’s condition.

“I was definitely having a great race, but I was pushing,” Diggia said. “And I’m pretty sure Marc was managing his pace after seeing on the pit board, unfortunately, that Martin was out. So I think we had more or less the same pace. In a longer race, it could have been a great battle.”

Those words sound like a warning ahead of the full-length race at Phillip Island: if his pace remains as strong as it was in the closing stages of the Sprint, Di Giannantonio will be looking to fight for more than third place.

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