Despite being taken out of the Austin sprint race by Marc Marquez on Saturday, in-form VR46 Ducati man Fabio Di Giannantonio had zero interest in dwelling on the incident afterwards.
The Italian had qualified on pole position for the second straight weekend, only to be punted out of third place by a crashing Marquez midway through the first lap.
Marquez will face a long lap penalty in Sunday’s grand prix as a result of the incident. He was clearly to blame and admitted as much.
“I always try to be fair,” said the seven-time world champion. “I did a mistake and I need to have a penalty. Tomorrow I will do that penalty.”
Di Giannantonio’s sprint misfortune could not be undone by any penalty, of course, but he was determined to keep the bigger picture in mind ahead of the US GP.
“There are too many positives,” said the Roman rider, who will line up first again on Sunday. “I don’t have time to be angry…”
“I’m at one of the best tracks in the world, riding against the best and starting from pole position, [breaking] the track record just a few hours ago. So how can a little episode destroy all that, you know?
“It’s just a little obstacle on our way to try to win races. Tomorrow, we have another chance, so the focus is really on that.
“I think we’ve done [too] many positive and great things on track to focus only on that particular moment of the sprint.”
Marquez and Di Giannantonio traded a few words in between their press briefings
Another positive Di Giannantonio will be happy to dream about was his pass on Marquez just a few moments before the race-ending incident. That came at Turn 7, in the heart of the difficult series of S-bends early in the lap. It also had echoes of his satisfying move on Marquez in Brazil a week earlier.
“I’m super proud of that one,” he grinned. “You know, it’s not an easy pass on anybody [there]. You go from the right to the left, you have to be really precise because there are a lot of bumps and different inclination of the track. So I’m proud of that one, above all.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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