MotoGP replacement Andrea Iannone is exhausted but happy after his comeback in Sepang – How his comparison to the Superbike World Championship turns out
For Andrea Iannone, the MotoGP weekend in Sepang was a bit of a leap in the dark. But the Superbike rider, who stood in for Fabio Di Giannantonio at VR46 Ducati, didn’t let his team down. He finished second-last in both the sprint and the race and gained valuable experience.
When asked what he had learned, the Italian said: “I learned that I’m faster than Bautista was last year.” At the time, two-time Superbike world champion Alvaro Bautista started with a wildcard, but he didn’t meet expectations.
“In the end, I was 15 seconds faster than Bautista was last year on the same bike,” Iannone calculates, adding: ”That’s the GP23 from the beginning of the year, he had the factory GP23. And he also had four or five days of testing, I didn’t. I ended the Superbike season in Jerez and came here almost straight away.”
However, Bautista is not willing to leave it at that. The Spaniard responded promptly on his X platform. “My goodness. Thank God there are times like this,” he wrote there.
“He was really exactly two minutes faster than me, with one race lap less, of course. If you subtract that one lap from my time to get to 19 laps like he did, I’m three seconds faster… and injured.”
In fact, Sunday’s Grand Prix was one lap shorter than last year’s because it had to be stopped and restarted after an incident at turn 2. That’s why it might be worth taking a look at the gap to the winner.
In the sprint, Bautista 2023 came in second to last, 36.5 seconds behind the winner. He also finished Sunday’s race in second-last place, 53.5 seconds behind the leader. In a direct comparison, Iannone was better: he was 25.8 seconds behind in the sprint and 47.5 in the Grand Prix.
But the goal was not to outpace Bautista, he emphasizes, but “not to make any mistakes and to finish the races, and I think we achieved that”.
Iannone: My physical condition was the limit
The biggest limitation in his first MotoGP appearance since 2019 was mainly physical. Compared to then, the MotoGP machines have become more physically demanding. The hot conditions in Sepang did the rest. “I broke down more than the tires,” jokes Iannone.
“So I’m really finished – my arms, my shoulder, my upper body, it’s all finished. So the limit is Andrea and not the bike. When I was fresh, I felt the limit. But when I’m not fresh, it’s difficult to reach the limit. Like today, during the race,” he explains.
He lost most of the time to the others on the brakes: “The problem is my arms at the braking point. It’s impossible to brake with a good intensity, with 100 percent of my strength, and I lose a lot – all at the braking point.”
On Saturday, after the sprint race over half the race distance, Iannone had already spoken primarily about the physical challenge. “It’s been so long – five years. In that time, the bike has changed completely. It’s a different story.”
“The more you push, the better the bike is. It’s so impressive. But the limit for me at the moment is not the package, which is really good. The garage works really well. The team is fantastic. It’s like a factory team. The limit is me, my physical condition. I’m not ready for this bike.”
By comparison, the Ducati with which he won his first race in the Superbike World Championship at Aragon is “a bike” in terms of the physical demands.
Iannone amazes in qualifying
In Saturday’s qualifying, Iannone still managed an amazing flying lap, leaving five drivers behind him. In the end, he was just three-tenths of a second slower than his VR46 teammate Marco Bezzecchi.
The latter had given Iannone some help in the time chase and was impressed. “He asked me if he could follow me, and I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I knew he could go very fast in one lap,” Bezzecchi explained.
“He did an amazing lap time considering he hasn’t raced in MotoGP for almost five years. So I was quite surprised by his lap time. Fortunately, he didn’t beat me. We had a little chat and he’s a damn good guy, so I like him.”
Asked if he might replace Di Giannantonio at the season finale in Barcelona after his successful weekend in Sepang, Iannone says: “I don’t know. Nobody has asked me yet.”
“To be honest, I don’t have much energy to think about it right now. I’ll wait to see if someone, Gigi or whoever wants to ask me, and then I’ll try to decide.”