Le Mans had other plans for Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team on Saturday. What looked like a promising Sprint race unraveled quickly as both Fabio Di Giannantonio and Franco Morbidelli hit the ground — though neither suffered any physical harm. Di Giannantonio showed his fighting spirit by remounting and pushing through to sixteenth, while Morbidelli’s afternoon came to an early and unwanted stop.
Di Giannantonio had put the team in a strong position with a fourth-place qualifying effort, but a slow start off the second row dragged him into the thick of a congested midfield battle. Scrapping for room in a tightly bunched group on soft tyres, he ran out of margin while setting up an overtake and went down at the chicane. He was back on the bike almost immediately, refusing to let the crash define his day, and eventually crossed the line in sixteenth. He holds fourth in the championship with 71 points.
Morbidelli faced an uphill battle from the moment the lights went out, starting from the sixth row after a difficult qualifying. He made modest progress before his race came undone on lap six, crashing at the final corner while running eighteenth. Unlike his teammate, he was unable to rejoin and returned to the garage early. He remains thirteenth in the standings with 25 points.
Speaking after the race, Di Giannantonio was open about the mistakes that cost him, admitting the start and the crash were his first real errors of the season. He was also quick to credit Morbidelli for a sharp, instinctive reaction that avoided what could have been a far more dangerous situation at the chicane. His focus has already shifted to Sunday — a clean start, he says, is everything.
Morbidelli echoed the sentiment of a tough day, pointing to ongoing rear grip issues that have made consistent pace hard to find. He took some comfort in the small improvements the team has been making, and was relieved to have avoided his teammate in the moment of the crash. The forecast for Sunday remains uncertain, but both riders head into the main race with something to prove.
