Fabio Di Giannantonio makes surprise admission about his COTA MotoGP bike swap

VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio admits he changed bikes at the start of the MotoGP Americas Grand Prix “not for any reason” other than because he was following Marc Marquez.

The start to last Sunday’s grand prix at the Circuit of the Americas was plunged into chaos when polesitter Marc Marquez ran off the grid just before the warm-up lap to grab his dry bike.

This began a stampede as other riders, including the front row, followed suit, with the start ultimately delayed on safety grounds.

Fabio Di Giannantonio - who had qualified second - did the same, but admits his team tried to stop him and he only left the grid because he saw Marquez do so - not because he felt it was the right time to change tyres.

“Honestly I was not having any ideas,” Di Giannantonio, who finished the race third, said.

“I just said ‘let’s do what Marc does’. In these conditions he’s always been quite clever.

“So, I saw him running, I jumped off the bike. My mechanics stopped me, I said ‘no, I have to go’.

“But honestly, not for any reason, I was just following.

“If I start on the front row and the guy on pole starts running out, I think I have to follow, I have to be on the same conditions.”

Fabio Di Giannantonio ends MotoGP podium drought at COTA

Di Giannantonio scored his first podium in over a year at the 2025 Americas GP, as he guided his VR46 Ducati to third.

It marks his first official rostrum since winning the 2023 Qatar GP, and was his first podium visit since that year’s Valencia GP - though a tyre pressure penalty subsequently dropped him to fourth.

His first podium with VR46 on the GP25 comes after he missed the last two rounds of 2024 to have surgery on a dislocated shoulder, before a crash at the end of day one of the 2025 Sepang test forced him back onto the sidelines until the opening round in Thailand.

Though benefitting from Marc Marquez’s crash out of the lead at COTA, Di Giannantonio admits his left arm was “completely exhausted” after just seven laps.

“Let’s say after the seventh lap, I said ‘ok, let’s have a look on the pitboard to see about the laps remaining’ and it was 11 laps,” he explained.

“So, I was like ‘oh, man, that’s a problem’ because my left arm was already completely exhausted.

“So, I started to ride in a completely different way, started to use a lot of muscles around the body and now honestly I’m tired.

“So, I tried to manage to five laps to the end. Then I saw I was matching Alex [Marquez’s] pace and also my tyres were not that bad.

“So, I tried to push a little bit to catch him. I was recovering, but I was still too far, and just the last lap I lost the rear a bit here and there. So, I said ‘it’s completely ok like this, let’s finish the race and make a wheelie’.”

He added: “I’m just so happy. We put so much work into it. This winter has been too long for us. Too many injuries, too many hours at the physio.

“And to be back where we should have been from the beginning is a super feeling.

“Just I can’t thank enough my team because they’ve always been by my side, always believed in me, and it’s not a thing that you take for granted.

“We knew that arriving here would be tough physically, I trained quite a lot while I was in America this week, and for this I’m super happy because we have improved, we are there, we are keeping the momentum going.

“I’m just proud of them, of me, of our race. For sure, this podium comes from a mistake from Marc but I think that’s racing.

“We make the podium and we take it and we go home with a lot of beers and celebrating.”