Race day got off to a good start for Energy T.I. Pramac Racing Team rider Andrea Iannone. He had a good pace during this morning's warm-up, shaving almost five-tenths from his best time he from yesterday's FP3.
Changes to the setup had given the Italian more control, allowing him to keep up with the small lead group.
Everything changed in the race, however. In the first part of the race, Andrea struggled hard to stay in the top ten, wrestling with an unexpected problem with the rear of his bike that slowed his pace and caused him to run wide at the San Donato corner on lap thirteen.
Iannone re-joined the race in nineteenth place and began to mount a comeback, and he recovered six positions to end up thirteenth.
The Energy T.I. Pramac Racing Team will return to action at the Catalan GP in two weeks.
Andrea Iannone – Energy T.I. Pramac Racing Team
“Right from the start, I was having lots of problems with rear grip—so much so that I considered stopping after the first four laps, as the situation was really weird. I’ve never felt the slide the rear so much for no reason. I hadn't had this problem throughout the entire weekend, and not even this morning in the warm-up. After returning to the pit at the end of the race, we immediately checked the telemetry, and you can clearly see that compared to this morning, there was no grip. I was struggling every time I braked and coming out of all the corners, even when I backed off the throttle. At the moment, we really have no idea what the problem is, but we kept the same setting as this morning, when I had a good pace. The only thing we changed before lining up on the starting grid was the tyres, so for now, if we analyse how the bike was behaving, that's all we can think of. Now Ducati is going to work together with Bridgestone to try and get a handle on what happened. Obviously, all I can say is that it was a major disappointment; after the warm-up, I was happy; we had a good pace to have a good race and stay close enough to Hayden and Dovizioso, but it just didn't turn out that way. Now we're thinking about Barcelona, another track that I really like.”
Francesco Guidotti – Team Manager Pramac Racing Team
“This morning we had found a good setting, and we thought we had overcome many of the problems Andrea was having. We were confident that we'd have a good race, but instead, Andrea ended up fighting with a slippery tyre that was really unusual. Now we have to check the data very closely, but Bridgestone will also definitely have to check the tyre, because there was such a huge difference compared to this morning that wasn't connected with any particular technical cause.”
Pramac Racing Team Press Release
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