VR46 confirm Diggia's "cannot say" missing Ducati MotoGP performance

VR46 team manager Pablo Nieto has confirmed that a lack of top speed is the ‘mystery’ issue affecting Fabio di Giannantonio this weekend at Sepang.

After finishing fifth in the Sprint, the Italian had said:

“We have a really great bike. A pity that we have other things that don’t allow us, at the moment, to really show our potential.”

However, he refused to explain what those issues were: “If you look at the results, the analysis, you can easily see. But I cannot say.”

Asked during warm-up whether top speed was the obvious thing missing for di Giannantonio in the Sprint, Nieto told MotoGP pit lane reporter Jack Appleyard:

“Yeah, it's a good question, because it's strange. We are losing more or less 7-8km/h in all the straights, and in this kind of track that's a lot.

“So we have to be very focused on why.

“We are working a lot with Ducati, but at the moment we don't know why, because all the engines that we have are exactly the same, but still we are missing that speed.

“So maybe it can be the aerodynamics, maybe it can be the [rider] position, maybe it can be the engine, we don't know.

Sprint Top Speeds:

“We have to check, and we have to control it. But the thing is that we are working together with Ducati.

"Ducati knows about that, but we have to see.”

Asked whether the problem had also been present at previous rounds, Nieto added:

“When you arrive at this kind of track, where the main straight is very, very long, you suffer a little bit more, it’s clear.

"Australia also, we miss some kilometres [per hour], but that track is completely different.

“We have to work a lot, because here it's going to be hard for overtakes, and then Qatar is going to be more or less the same.

“So we have to try to find the solution.”

di Giannantonio, who qualified on the outside of the second row in sixth, went on to finish ninth in Sunday morning's warm-up.