The weather conditions led to a crazy qualifying session, with heat, rain and the asphalt that was neither completely wet nor dry, but enough for the drivers to go out on the track with slick tires on a highly dangerous day.
In the end, the youngest and most unaware, and also those who, surely, had the least to lose, launched themselves in pursuit of a pole that fell into the hands of the rookie Fabio Di Giannantonio, who also reached Q2 after passing the cut of the Q1.
“What can I say?” the 23-year-old Roman pilot wondered.
“It is something absolutely incredible, because you arrive here at Mugello as a rookie and you hope to have a good result for all the people who come for you, who cheer you on, with all the support you have here in your home race. MotoGP at Mugello is something incredible, and reaching pole position is even more so,” summed up the Gresini Racing rider.
“It was a great end of the day for me, and one of my life’s dreams is to be at the top of the grid in MotoGP. And today we did it here, so it’s incredible,” he insisted.
Di Giannantonio came into Q2 after going through an initial selection of expert drivers, and admitted that following Marc Márquez and Jack Miller helped him better understand the track conditions in Q1.
“Well, knowing more or less the track conditions helped me for sure,” he said. “But also to follow Jack and Marc during Q1, who are the fastest in these conditions normally. I was behind them, I saw that the tire limit was very high, so I was able to push very hard to go fast. And that gave me gave the motivation, the knowledge that it would be possible in Q2 to push like this”, he valued.
Although he will start from pole, the young Italian admitted that this did not give him any guarantee of being able to fight for victory.
“For tomorrow it is unknown. We are up, but at this moment, honestly, we do not have the race pace to win for sure,” he admitted. “We will try to enjoy the race, fight in the first few laps, and then we’ll see. But we have the morning session to better understand where we stand,” he said before setting himself a more realistic goal.
“Honestly, I have come here to reconfirm the good performance of Le Mans. So if we achieve that, it would be good enough for me,” he concluded.
