ANDREA IANNONE BLOG – January 2018

“This year has not been an easy season for us and definitely harder than expected. When we first tested the GSX-RR back in Valencia last year, my feeling was very good and with the whole team we thought we could achieve good results.

“Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. Despite the first race in Qatar being a good one, we started to struggle a little bit and it took me a long time to get used to the Suzuki machine. My crew chief Marco Rigamonti and myself were new to Team Suzuki, meaning that we had to start from the scratch with the bike knowledge and with the working philosophy of the Japanese company.

“Every MotoGP team is different and when you come from many years with a specific environment it’s really complicated to change your way to approach the work and also to face problems. But as time passes in the garage you learn to trust your colleagues and you take advantage of the huge number of things they can explain and teach you about the bike.

“Patience and focus are the key of success, this is something I’ve always believed in. And this has been proved this year again. We kept on working, little-by-little, step-by-step. We got into a lot of frustration but even in the darkest times, we never lost our faith in hard work.

“Finally, in Brno and then in Aragon, some new technical solutions on the machine reassured our beliefs: We found the mistakes, we had some solutions and 2018 looked brighter after that. This came from the teamwork, which is the key.”