Fabio Di Giannantonio is targeting consistent point scoring for his sophomore MotoGP season with Gresini Racing in 2023.

The Italian suffered a rollercoaster rookie year with just six points scoring finishes. A best placing of eighth at the Sachsenring backed up his impressive maiden pole position on home soil two rounds earlier, but Di Giannantonio is confident he has what it takes to target the top ten repeatedly this time round, thanks in no small part to new arrival Frankie Carchedi.

“For this year, we have a few changes,” the 24-year-old explained from Saturday’s 2023 launch. “First of all in the staff I have a new crew chief, that is Frankie Carchedi, that was working with Joan Mir in Suzuki. We did our first test together and it went really good, also personally we're really good.

“Also we have the new bike, the 2022 bike that is not much different compared to 2021 but still there are some things that are new and better. For sure, I will continue my learning process, my growth, but the goal for this season is to improve every race the result of last year. To try to be consistently in the top 15 and then from that, try to achieve goal by goal.

“First get back in the points, and then top tens, then top five and maybe if we do a good job, fighting for something more.

“At the moment we are taking our time,” he continued. “We are just with the feet on the ground, we know that we have long work to do but the feeling is great and the energy is super, super high.

“Has been an up and down season last year, for sure we had some problems,” Di Giannantonio reflected on his introduction to the premier class. “First of all, when you're a rookie you need to do a lot of trials and also mistakes and failures to understand and then build from there. So we did our mistakes but was also normal because all my side of the team were rookie so we were struggling a little bit for sure.

“I think the potential is quite high so for this we were able to do some highs during the year but with the arrival of Frankie Carchedi, I think that we have the right experience to step up, deliver and then see to do something more this year. He did a lot of years in MotoGP so I think it will help us to remove some mistakes that we’ve done this year so feeling great and I can't wait to start!”