Iannone recounts: the conditions for racing in SBK and his Ducati MotoGP regret

Iannone was a guest on Gianluca Gazzoli’s BSBM and shared some anecdotes from his motorcycle racing career.

The future of Andrea Iannone in motorcycle racing is still uncertain; for 2026 he doesn’t have a seat either on the Superbike grid or in another championship. He certainly wants to keep racing, but only under specific technical and financial conditions. We’ll see if there are updates in the coming days. In the meantime, the rider was a guest on the popular italia podcast hosted by Gianluca Gazzoli.

Speaking about his future, the Abruzzo-born rider couldn’t give any indication of what he’ll do in 2026, but he reiterated that he wants a situation where he can be highly competitive: “It’s a complex moment. I’m no longer at an age where I can accept compromises, I have no time to waste, I’m not a rider who needs to gain experience and can therefore settle for certain things. I’m ready, and if I’m put in the right conditions, I should be there aiming to win. Talking with my brother Angelo and my manager Gelete Nieto, I set some conditions: either there’s a situation that allows me to fight for the top five in every race, or it no longer makes sense for me.”

Iannone believes he can be a top rider in the Superbike World Championship if he’s given a winning bike: “For Superbike I’m not old. Bautista is 41, he’s competitive and will keep racing. I’m 36, so I can do another 3–4 good years. But I want a great situation. We’re trying to put together an important project.”

The Maniac explains that racing has nothing to do with what critics might think of him for various reasons; he has no desire for revenge against them: “I don’t race to make people change their minds. When I’m on the bike, I know where I can get to, what the limits are, and what the strengths are. But I think that if, after being sidelined for four years, I came back and in the first race I fought for the win, then got some podiums and won a race with a tiny super-private team, in which I put so much of myself to return, what more do I have to prove? I don’t think I have anything to prove.”

Iannone also said he regretted leaving Ducati at the end of the 2016 MotoGP season: “I’m sorry I left Ducati,” he admits, “in my opinion it was the biggest mistake of my career. There was a kind of magic between me and all the Ducati people at that time. I had the contract ready to sign; everything was agreed. In Australia I was supposed to sign the letter of intent, but I decided to wait for Qatar. Then they tried to get Lorenzo and made him an offer, he countered with Yamaha, which accepted his request. Jorge said he would stay there, so I think at that point Ducati made another counteroffer and I was the one who ended up paying the price. I was really disappointed, because it was kind of a done deal.”

The fact that Ducati wanted to invest a lot of money to sign Jorge Lorenzo pushed him toward a move to Suzuki, which had made him a more financially advantageous offer: “Many say it all happened because of the race in Argentina—the rider explains—the contact with Dovizioso, but that’s not true. I still had the contract to sign afterward. In the end I was upset, and I also had an incredible offer from Suzuki; I had never seen so much money. But I made a mistake. Then I left Suzuki too, even though there weren’t really reasons to leave, I had taken some podiums. At Aprilia we were building, they responded very well the following year with the new bike that I couldn’t try. My input had been right and helpful for development.”