Rins: “What is he doing?” Di Giannantonio overtake “super strange”

Alex Rins has explained his frustration with Fabio Di Giannantonio after nearly coming to blows with the Ducati rider during FP2 at the Italian MotoGP.

Robert Jones

09 Jun 2023

Alex Rins, LCR Honda MotoGP Le Mans 2023

Rins, who like Marc Marquez showed excellent speed aboard his Honda during the closing stages of FP2, nearly had an incident with Di Giannantonio.

After overtaking the Italian on one of his fast laps, Rins was left surprised when the Gresini Ducati rider attempted to regain track position before crashing out at turn one.

DI Ginannatonio went barrel-rolling through the gravel in what was a very hard fall, while Rins was left asking questions following the session after claiming he braked as late as possible for turn one, thus an overtake was too risky in his eyes.

"On the first new tyre I was [on a flying lap] and he was coming out of the box and I found him at corner 11," said Rins.

"I was quite close to hitting him. It can happen. Like Morbidelli and Alex Marquez this morning.

"But the second one was super strange because I braked so hard at corner one and I saw someone overtaking me on the inside.

"I said to myself ‘what is he doing, he will go wide’, and then he crashed. If I didn’t brake super hard I would have hit him. This was the act of frustration that I had at that moment."

Asked if he knew how close Di Giannantonio was, Rins added: "No, but I knew that overtook him on the last corner.

While Rins eventually lost out to Francesco Bagnaia and Marco Bezzecchi, the LCR Honda rider showed that the RC213V can be competitive at Mugello, especially since the deficit on the straiights is not as big as expected.

"It’s not that much but on the straights we are not so high [in top speed] so it’s a little bit hard," said Rins.

With regards to where he and Honda can improve, hard braking and the feeling with the hard tyre were key areas mentioned by Rins.

The hard tyre is what was used by Marquez when he crashed prior to setting a time that momentarily put him fastest before Rins jumped ahead of the eight-time world champion.

Rins stated: "I would like to improve a bit on the hard braking. With the hard tyre I didn’t get so much information, so much feedback from the tyre, so we have to work on this."