Qualifying for the Americas GP was a tough one the Suzuki Ecstar team, with Alex Rins out of commission due to a fracture to his left wrist in FP3 and Andrea Iannone struggling to find the proper touch for a good qualifying run.
While Rins was undergoing a stabilizing intervention at the University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, Iannone went through the Q2 finishing in 11th place with 2'05.741.
Iannone struggled in the morning session as he tried to demonstrate the proper confidence with his GSX-RR, but thanks to his tenth placed time, scored the day before, he was able to keep his tenth place in the combined classification which allowed him direct access to Q2.
The qualifying session saw the Italian rider in another slide, which had no major repercussions to him or the machine but made him lose time, and more importantly, the possibility to fully take advantage of the soft tyres. This resulted in the 11th place time, which will require him to work extra hard to catch up in Sunday's race.
“Honestly we weren't expecting to struggle so much,” he said. “I'm pretty worried. It's a shame we cannot perform as good as we'd like and we deserve, but for me it's also a part of the growing process we are in. Therefore, we will already be trying to improve tomorrow. Anyway we hope to get some improvements pretty soon and we will see if we are heading in the right direction. The situation got worse today because of the track conditions. Yesterday we were not so far off, and I was confident, but with these new conditions I am struggling more.¨
