With 15 modest points scored since the start of the year, The Maniac occupies a very discreet fifteenth position in the provisional Championship standings, 70 points behind leader Maverick Vinales. It is therefore not as a conqueror that he arrives this weekend at Mugello to compete in his national Grand Prix, in which he finished third last year on a Ducati, after having won there in Moto2 in 2010 then being ranked second in MotoGP in 2015, on Ducati.
Still at Mugello, he achieved pole position in 2010 in Moto2, then in 2015 in MotoGP, with the absolute circuit record in 1'46.489. Never has a motorcycle rider gone faster at Mugello. It was also his only pole in the MotoGP category so far. In 2016, he started from third place on the grid for the Italian GP, alongside Valentino Rossi on Yamaha and – this is where it gets interesting – Maverick Vinales on Suzuki. The GSX-RR is therefore clearly competitive on the Tuscan circuit and this should serve Iannone's interests.
The winter tests generally went well at the start for Suzuki, with Iannone fourth at Valencia, then second at Sepang (0.08 behind Vinales), before a certain stagnation occurred, Andrea placing thirteenth at Phillip Island, and finally thirteenth back to Losail.
The first quarter of the season could hardly have been worse, with two crashes at Losail and Jerez, a sixteenth place out of the points in Argentina, and to save the whole a seventh position in Texas and a tenth at Le Mans. To complicate matters for Suzuki, Alex Rins could only finish the first GP at Qatar before being injured several times.
For Andrea Iannone, “The bike corners well, with good grip on the sidewall of the tire. The problem is during acceleration when it slips and rears up.
“The handling of the bike is good, but entering curves is a problem. It is very difficult to reduce speed from the start of braking, up to the apex point.
“This perfectible corner entry and the imperfect acceleration cost me a lot of time, especially in the first laps. But Suzuki is aware of these problems and is working hard to remedy them."
Andrea's two benchmarks will be the 1'46.598 achieved by Maverick Vinales during last year's tests, as well as the 1'48.147 set in the race on the GSX-RR.
Color photos © Suzuki
Black & white photo: Iannone personal
Partial source: aurosport.com
