MotoGP | Diggia suffers and there is also mockery: penalty for tire pressure

Fabio Di Giannantonio is gritting his teeth to avoid throwing in the towel, but he is going through a difficult time. Unfortunately, his 2024 season has become complicated at the best moment of his MotoGP career: the Pertamina Enduro VR46 rider seemed capable of aiming for top 5 positions and had just signed a contract with Ducati to have a GP25 next season, but the magic was broken at the Red Bull Ring, when a crash during practice resulted in a bad dislocation of his left shoulder.

After missing the rest of the Red Bull Ring weekend, the Roman had the strength to immediately get back on his Ducati, but he is suffering a lot. As if that wasn’t enough, yesterday he was the victim of another bad fall at turn 10, which probably worsened his condition. Despite everything, he decided to continue the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend and in the end he managed to finish 13th in the Sprint.

Bad luck, however, when it strikes, seems to really see things very well, because after the race he incurred an 8″ penalty for having raced with a tire pressure lower than the minimum value imposed by Michelin, which made him drop to 18th place in the final standings. No big deal, considering that in the Sprint only the first nine score points, but the feeling is that it really continues to rain on the wet.

When he spoke to reporters, Fabio didn’t yet know about the penalty, so he focused mainly on his condition: “Waking up this morning was a bit worse than I expected: I have a strong bruise on the right side of my rib and also behind it, my right collarbone is hurting again and my shoulder isn’t feeling great either, so it’s a really dark period physically.”

“My fitness is also starting to decline a bit, because I can’t train as I would like and should. I’m just trying to recover and maximize everything on the track, looking for small victories. It’s almost unthinkable to think of returning to the level I was before, to compete in the top 5, so I’m trying to regain confidence and ride in the most natural way possible,” he added.

The calendar now includes seven races in the space of just nine weeks, but this doesn’t seem to be a big problem for him: “The race weekend doesn’t affect my recovery. I mean, getting physically tired doesn’t make it longer. It’s possible falls like yesterday that make you take three steps back. I want to race and try to do my best and I’m very sure that when I’ve recovered I’ll be back to myself. For the future we’re trying to understand if I’ll need to have an operation on my left shoulder, but for now we’re just trying to recover as much as possible during the breaks.”

For the moment, however, he is not considering the possibility of trying to skip a race: “It wouldn’t be useful for me to skip a race, I would just stay on the couch one more Sunday and arrive at the next race in the same conditions. To recover to 80% I would have to stop for two months. I expected to arrive here already at 80%, but after yesterday’s crash I am perhaps in the worst conditions since I have been racing in the World Championship, so I am struggling and at the end of the race I feel very tired. And obviously I am also taking painkillers, otherwise it would be unthinkable to ride”.