Andrea Iannone finally returned to a competition motorcycle about four years later, riding this week in the Superbike World Championship tests in Jerez. The rider set convincing lap times, but in this adaptation to the Ducati Panigale V4 R and in the return to competitive context, the task was not easy.
The Italian admitted to the website GPOne.com that he was particularly exhausted in this first contact with WSBK: ‘I’m destroyed. I haven’t ridden a competition motorcycle for several years and although I have trained over the years on production bikes, it’s different. On the track, you encounter amateurs who ride for fun, and it’s complex for a rider to train well, to have a free track. But I always trained at maximum, but it’s not enough for WSBK or MotoGP. They are different bikes, of course. But there is a lot of power in both, braking is always difficult, and I had some problems with my arms, but that’s normal. I’m happy‘.
The physical aspect was indeed what caused the most problems for Iannone in these tests, as he himself stated: ‘I had difficulties physically because there are muscles that you only use with the competition bike. So, I arrived at 2:00 pm [on Wednesday] and it was the most laps I had done, my arms were tired, I was having difficulties with acceleration. That affected my performance a little bit, but I know it’s something I need to work on at home. I tried to extract the best, I believe it would have been difficult to do more than this‘.
