Ducati Team’s Iannone, who will be forced to start Sunday’s race from the back of the grid after his clash with Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) in Barcelona, hit the ground running immediately on Friday at the Motul TT Assen. The Italian was on the pace from the word go, topping FP1 with a 1’34.349. As the conditions at the TT Circuit Assen improved in the afternoon for FP2, Iannone managed to shave another seven tenths of a second off his best time, setting a 1’33.591 with just minutes to go to top the overall timesheets. He was four thousandths of a second quicker than the second placed Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) and 0.420s faster than his teammate Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) in sixth.
The MotoGP™ action resumes with FP3 at 09:55 Local time on Saturday local time in Assen, with Qualifying at 14:10 Local Time.
Andrea Iannone: “Today was not so bad! The first impressions were very good for me and my team, but the situation is not easy. It was difficult to change direction on the bike and we tried to improve this, but we couldn’t improve it that much. This is a difficult point for us, especially for me, as this is a very physical bike and it’s very important that you use all of the power, therefore you need to be strong to last the race. But for sure tomorrow we will try and improve this situation, improve our limit and hopefully then we can go faster, but it is not so bad to finish top in both practice sessions.”