Andrea Iannone compared his Malaysian Grand Prix times with those of Alvaro Bautista last year. But his reasoning is wrong, judged the Spanish pilot.
Andrea Iannone made his return to MotoGP this weekend, five years after his last appearance in the category. The Italian replaced the injured Fabio di Giannantonio in the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team. Happy coincidence: it was at Sepang, on the same circuit where Alvaro Bautista competed in a Grand Prix in 2023.
Both men come from the Superbike World Championship. Iannone therefore believes that it is with Bautista that he should compare himself, and not with MotoGP riders used to prototypes. “He must be my criterion, not Francesco Bagnaia”he estimated at the end of the weekend.
Arriving 17th, Iannone declared himself faster than the Spaniard in 2023: “The goal was to finish the race, in the end I was 15 seconds faster than Bautista last year, with more or less the same bike. Especially since he had already tried it. »
Except that this year, the race lasted 19 laps due to the two starts that were given, instead of 20 last year. A detail that did not escape Bautista, who responded to his rival on X: “Madre mia… Fortunately there are times… He was exactly 2 minutes faster than me… with one lap less, of course. If you subtract a lap from my total time to have 19 laps like him, I'm 3 seconds faster… and being injured. »
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