How a struggling MotoGP sophomore saved his career but highlighted a wider issue

Gresini Ducati rookie Fabio Di Giannantonio scored points on just six occasions in 2022. His haul at the end of that season was a slender 24, a full 87 points adrift of the next Ducati rider in the standings. His fellow rookie Marco Bezzecchi, had a higher peak too, managing a podium at Assen on his VR46-run GP21.

There was a flash of speed when Di Giannantonio took pole at Mugello. But this was circumstantial, as he had come through Q1 on a drying track and therefore had a head start on the conditions over most of the Q2 field.

“The first thing is, due to unfortunate circumstances with Fausto [Gresini] and everything – I’m sure he would admit himself – that he was early to move up,” Di Giannantonio’s crew chief Frankie Carchedi tells Motorsport.com.

“I think he finished seventh or eighth in Moto2. So, already it’s going to be difficult. You go to MotoGP where everyone is a world champion at some level. The team saw something in him, which is why they picked him, and it was a difficult first year but I think that’s also the transition. I think the class of the team, because not many teams would have given a rider a second year.”

Di Giannantonio, runner-up in the 2018 Moto3 title race to then-Gresini team-mate Jorge Martin, moved up to Moto2 with the Italian squad in 2019 and was a solid ninth in the standings with a couple of podiums. In 2021, he scored his first win in Spain and was already earmarked to make the jump to MotoGP the following season when Gresini parted ways with Aprilia and returned to fielding its own independent outfit.

Fausto Gresini’s untimely death at the start of 2021 due to COVID-19 didn’t alter this plan, but Di Giannantonio’s run to seventh in the standings in Moto2 that year arguably called for a fourth season in the class before taking the final step to MotoGP. Despite his difficulties in 2022, Gresini retained him for a second year.

After 14 rounds, Di Giannantonio had just 53 points. By now, eight-time world champion Marquez was icing him out of a Gresini ride. Even before this, Moto2 frontrunners Tony Arbolino and Jake Dixon had been linked to Di Giannantonio’s seat.

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

A lacklustre start to Di Giannantonio’s second year put his seat under threat long before Marquez took it

However that 14th round in Japan did mark a turning point, having finished eighth in the GP. The 25-year-old scored a career-best fourth (and first MotoGP top six) at the following Indonesian GP. A week later in Australia, he was third. All of a sudden, he was being linked to the vacant factory Honda.

A brace of ninths in Thailand and Malaysia came as VR46’s Luca Marini emerged as a frontrunner for the RC213V. In Qatar, Di Giannantonio put everything together to become MotoGP’s newest winner having beaten eventual world champion Francesco Bagnaia.

“On this, and it happens very, very rarely, if I had written it on a piece of…