- Fabio Di Giannantonio broke down in tears in a farewell speech to VR46, the team that rebuilt his MotoGP career after Gresini Ducati dropped him for Marc Marquez.
- He is leaving for a factory KTM contract in 2027, a decision he called difficult on a personal level but necessary for his professional future.
- The move comes days after Di Giannantonio set a new lap record at Circuit of the Americas to claim back-to-back pole positions for the first time in his career.
A Speech He Could Not Finish Without Breaking Down
Fabio Di Giannantonio stood in front of the VR46 garage, with team boss Uccio Salucci and sporting director Pablo Nieto watching, and tried to explain why he was leaving a team that had just given him everything. He did not get through it cleanly.
“I really thought it would be easier,” Di Giannantonio said, his voice catching. “You guys have been an incredible team. You are a crazy team. I’ve never felt this good in a team.” He paused, then added the line that summed up three years of a career most people had written off: “You guys gave me everything. All the beautiful things that are happening to me are thanks to you.”
The footage of the farewell, released by VR46, shows a rider in tears more than once. It is not the image most fans have of Di Giannantonio, who arrived in MotoGP with swagger and a nickname, Diggia, that suggested a rider who did not take himself too seriously. The tears were for a team that took a chance on him when almost nobody else would.
The Season That Nearly Ended His MotoGP Career
Go back to October 2023 and Di Giannantonio was headed nowhere. Gresini Ducati, his team from his rookie season on, announced it was replacing him with eight-time world champion Marc Marquez for 2024. Losing a factory-adjacent seat to Marquez is not a rejection anyone can argue with, but it still meant Di Giannantonio had no confirmed ride in MotoGP’s premier class after a mixed rookie year that had produced a best finish of eighth and left him 20th in the standings.
He got one more chance to save himself before the door closed completely: seven races left in the 2023 season, and a Ducati seat he needed to justify keeping in some form. He delivered. A first podium in Australia. Then, in the second-to-last round in Qatar, his first premier-class win. Two podiums and a maiden victory in the final stretch of a season that had looked like the end of his top-flight career three months earlier turned it into a lifeline.
What VR46 Built With Him
VR46, the team founded by Valentino Rossi, signed Di Giannantonio for 2024 without the factory backing he had lost at Gresini. What followed was not an immediate reward but a rebuild: a rider proving, race by race, that Qatar 2023 was not a one-off. His performances were strong enough that Ducati handed him a two-year contract extension and, for 2025, a full factory-spec bike, an upgrade that team boss decisions rarely hand to a rider who arrived as damaged goods eighteen months earlier.
That trust is what made the goodbye land the way it did. Di Giannantonio was not leaving a team that tolerated him. He was leaving a team that had staked its own credibility on rebuilding him, and had won that bet.
Why He Left Anyway
The KTM move is a factory deal, and Di Giannantonio was candid that the decision came down to something specific: the chance to shape a motorcycle around his own riding style rather than adapt to one built for someone else. “It was not easy, especially personally, with this beautiful group of people I have right in my corner with the VR46 team,” he said. “Sometimes you need to decide your future, and I think it was the best option for my professional career.”
It is a rare kind of split, a rider leaving on good terms, in tears, for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting out and everything to do with an opportunity he could not turn down. KTM does not hand out factory contracts to riders it does not see as championship material long-term, and Di Giannantonio, who wears the number 21 in honor of a childhood encounter with Troy Bayliss at Portimao in 2008 that he has called the moment his career direction changed, is stepping into that role at 28, an age when a rider knows exactly what a factory seat is worth.
The Project He Is Joining
Di Giannantonio is not walking into a rebuild at KTM the way he once had to rebuild himself at Gresini. Pedro Acosta, KTM’s lead rider, is putting together his best season yet in the premier class, his third year on the RC16, with multiple podiums including a runner-up result at Aragon and a podium at the United States Grand Prix. KTM’s factory program has been climbing steadily rather than scrambling to recover, which makes the seat Di Giannantonio is stepping into in 2027 a genuine shot at fighting near the front, not a landing spot for a rider hoping to simply stay relevant.
That distinction stands out against the arc of his own career. Di Giannantonio has now gone from a rider without a confirmed premier-class seat in October 2023, to a factory Ducati rider by 2025, to a factory KTM rider alongside one of the grid’s fastest-rising talents for 2027. Each move has come from strength rather than desperation, a pattern that is rare in a sport where most riders’ seat changes are forced on them by results rather than chosen from a position of real bargaining power.
A Pole Lap That Made the Timing Sting More
The farewell arrived days after Di Giannantonio delivered one of the best weekends of his career on track. At Circuit of the Americas, he took pole position with a lap of 2:00.136, breaking Maverick Vinales’s 2024 track record and securing back-to-back poles for the first time. It followed pole and a win in Brazil, meaning Di Giannantonio heads into his final months with VR46 riding better than he has at almost any point after that first win in Qatar two years ago.
Leaving in the Middle of a Title Fight, Not the End of One
Di Giannantonio is not exiting VR46 as a rider whose season fell apart. He sits fourth in the 2026 MotoGP standings, 48 points behind championship leader Jorge Martin after a rough weekend at Aragon, and he has already banked his second premier-class win of the season with a victory at Barcelona. That places him inside the group of riders who can still realistically affect how the title fight plays out over the closing rounds, even if a championship of his own this year looks out of reach.
That context makes the farewell speech land differently than a standard end-of-contract news cycle. Di Giannantonio will spend the rest of 2026 racing for VR46 with a KTM contract already signed for the following year, wearing a team’s colors while knowing exactly where he is headed next. Riders in that position sometimes coast. Nothing about his form after Barcelona suggests he plans to.
That is the part that makes the exit harder to file away as a simple business move. He is not leaving a struggling team for a better one out of necessity. He is leaving a team he is winning with, mid-form. A factory opportunity does not wait for a convenient moment. The tears in that garage were not about the team failing him. They were about a rider who knows precisely what he is walking away from, and is doing it anyway.
Sources:
- https://www.crash.net/motogp/news/1100383/1/watch-fabio-di-giannantonios-tearful-farewell-vr46-ahead-ktm-motogp-move
- https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/always-carry-heart-motogp-star-123000313.html
- https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motogp-di-giannantonio-on-pole-position-at-cota/
- https://www.gpone.com/en/2025/09/11/motogp/di-giannantonio-biaggi-is-an-inspiration-but-im-loyal-to-troy-bayliss.html
