Fabio di Giannantonio 'knocked out' by illness after day one of Shakedown

MotoGP rookie Fabio di Giannantonio was only able to ride for 38 laps during the Sepang Shakedown test, after being ruled out of days two and three by a stomach illness.

The Gresini Ducati rider, who had been fastest rookie at November's Jerez test, now hopes to be fit to ride at the Official test on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m obviously very sorry," said the young Italian. "I got ready as good as I could to start these three days on the right foot, and the whole off-season in general. Due to a 'silly' thing unfortunately I had to stay in bed.

"Yesterday I was totally knocked out, while today I’m a little better. I want to hope that with a couple more days off I will be ready to get back on track from Saturday already.”

Having passed all necessary Covid tests, Dr Michele Zasa of the Clinica Mobile believes di Giannantonio is suffering from, "A simple gastroenteritis, with the symptoms appearing at the end of the opening day of testing.

"This is something quite common when we travel to the Southeast of Asia, but still led to high dehydration that doesn’t allow him to ride safely.

"As a precautionary measure, he rested for two days and hopefully he will back to 100% of his physical condition for the upcoming two days of testing.

"He is recovering already, but it will be important to monitor the situation in the next hours.”

Di Giannantonio's track engineer Donatello Giovanotti is now revising the testing schedule for the #49.

“The idea for these three days was to understand the bike, but especially the tyres," he said. "After a quite positive [opening] day - despite the small number of laps - in which we only used the medium-tyre option, the schedule also included a test with the other tyre option and a mini race simulation to understand the bike behaviour and all the electronic strategies.

"It will be difficult to recover the time lost in the next couple of test days at Sepang: we will try to make up for the time lost after day one, try the other tyre option and try a race situation, but obviously we won’t be able to concentrate on the electronics and setup.”