Starting in eighth place, Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team) shot off the line and quickly found himself in fourth at the end of the first lap. Valentino Rossi (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) and Maverick Viñales (Team Suzuki Ecstar) would pass him the very next lap and demote the Italian down to sixth place. Slowly he worked on closing the gap to Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP), who was experiencing issues and off the pace. On lap 17 Iannone attempted a passing manoeuvre on Lorenzo, but the pair came together and fell from the race. As a result Race Direction have imposed a penalty on Iannone which will see him started from the back of the grid in Assen, the next round of the MotoGP™ World Championship.
Andrea Iannone: “I am very sorry for what happened with Lorenzo because I was doing a good race with the limited grip I had. I was riding well and pushing hard, without making any errors, and had even managed to catch Jorge. As for the incident, I can only say that I could do nothing to avoid it: I braked at the same point as all the previous laps but he was very slow at that moment and unfortunately I made contact with him and we both crashed. It might seem that I came in too fast and that I wanted to pass him but that’s not the way it went and we got the confirmation of this by analyzing the telemetry data.”