Last year, Fabio Di Giannantonio had a difficult season in MotoGP. Despite it being his second season and staying with Gresini, he struggled to show clear improvements… before ending the season fighting at the front and even winning a race despite his uncertain future. His chief mechanic was Frankie Carchedi.
The engineer was questioned by Crash.net about the turning point for the Italian rider and replied: ‘For many people it seemed crazy, but I knew it in Silverstone. If you go back and look at the time distance to Pecco [Bagnaia] at the beginning; then look again after 15 laps – just before he stopped to change to rain tires – and he closed the gap to Pecco. So, he was one of the fastest and gained that time, despite having to overtake other riders…’.
Carchedi also believes that signs of a turnaround were seen in the German and Dutch GPs, although he considers Silverstone to be the real turning point: ‘When you start near the back, or in the case of Silverstone, he was thrown off track at the beginning, you’re not going to recover to the front in MotoGP. He knew it, “if I could have the qualifying…”. And that turned out to be the key. It’s all about putting together a whole weekend. Because suddenly, from not making it into Q2 at all in the first ten rounds, we started regularly being in Q2 towards the end. And then it’s a completely different weekend’.
In the Australian GP, Di Giannantonio started from the second row of the grid and finished fourth, before starting in the top three and winning in Qatar… and coming close to the podium in Valencia from a more distant position: ‘In Phillip Island he was on the second row. Then he finally got a front row in Qatar and I don’t think he had an easier race than that. But in Valencia he started from the fourth row and that was the difference in the race. Because, once again, we knew he had the pace to win, and I think he cut more than three seconds to Pecco. Unfortunately, he needed one more lap,’ said Carchedi.
