SBK, Iannone and long lap mess: "No one could give us an explanation"

Andrea Iannone's Sunday at Portimão was one to be forgotten. After a second restart and the red flag, he withdrew. The Go Eleven rider is going home with a bitter taste in his mouth for a weekend below expectations.

Let's try to figure out what happened, as reported by the Go Eleven team, since Iannone didn't appear in front of the press at the end of the race.

"In race two, Andrea started early, getting the jump start penalty, which is a double long lap penalty, as per the rules. Since he committed it at lap three, he immediately did the first one correctly and, at that moment, the penalty disappears from the dashboard, suggesting that the penalty was served. Number twenty-nine makes a very fast comeback, with laps in the high fortiess. He crosses the finish line on lap eight, without doing the second long lap, but, just then, the red flag is shown. In the ten minutes spent in the pit lane before restarting, despite the clarifications requested in Race Direction and from the FIM, no one was able to give any information to either the team nor Andrea."

The latter restarts the race and, on the first lap, he was given a ride through. Race completely ruined and no chance of a comeback. The main problem was the untimeliness of the communication and the lack of clarity on what to do on the restart. The pace was there. In race two, the team found its way back in terms of set-up, to the extent that Andrea was quite happy with his sensations on the bike."

The Maniac stated: "Today was an unlucky day for us. In the superpole race, I wasn't able to make a comeback to get into the nine and, in race two, I had to leave the fight for positions close to the podium due to a jump start. The dashboard communication marked my penalty as being okay after the first long lap, and I didn't realize I had to do another. Then, with the red flag, no one could give us proper communication of our penalty and, as soon as we restarted, we were given a ride through. There, our race ended. Today, we had the pace to be in the top five, but we'll make up for it in Assen!"