Solid Start For Di Giannantonio At Legendary Le Mans
The French Grand Prix, fifth round of the 2016 Moto3 World Championship, kicked off today in Le Mans with the first two free practice sessions on the historic Sarthe circuit. With Enea Bastianini forced in the pits after being declared unfit to ride yesterday, the Gresini Racing Team Moto3 was on track with Fabio Di Giannantonio, who ended the day with a lap time of 1’44”345, 18th fastest time in the combined classification.
On a track where he had never raced before, the 17-year-old rookie from Rome enjoyed a good first day of practice, improving by 1.4 seconds his lap time between the morning and the afternoon session and closing the day less than 1 second off the pace.
FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO (18th – 1’44”345)
“Today was the first Friday practice where I can say that I’m truly satisfied, because I was able to improve myself significantly every time I was out on track. Only in the last run of the afternoon session I made some mistakes and as a result I failed to take advantage of the softer tyre. However I’m very happy: I feel good and tomorrow we will try to take another step forward! The track is beautiful, we just need to improve a bit in the first chicane and under braking in general, because the bike is still moving a bit too much at the rear. We worked hard on this area today, and tomorrow I think we can find a good solution”.
FAUSTO GRESINI
“On a track he didn’t know, Fabio was very good in this first day of practice: regardless of the final position, today his gap from the fastest rider was less than a second, and this shows that Fabio is actually improving race by race. This means that we can start to look more easily to the points, a target which I consider already achieved in Jerez”.
