Iannone withdraws from Jerez MotoGP test after first day

As a result of losing its concessions earlier in the season, Suzuki is restricted to just five private testing days a year with its works riders, the first of which it used on Wednesday with Iannone.

The Italian completed 68 laps on board the GSX-RR, with a particular focus on trying out different specs of engine, but will not be back on Thursday or Friday after the team decided it had done enough running.

Iannone will therefore not be back in action until the next official pre-season test, which begins on January 30 at Sepang.

"After having lost the concessions we want to save testing days for the future and having completed all the tests we needed we won’t have him ride more," said Suzuki team boss Davide Brivio.

"Our purpose here was not the chase to the fastest lap but to allow him to improve his feeling with the machine and help us to determine the future development.

"We brought here some different specs of the engine that he tried, and he gave us the direction to take in the winter.

"We will not develop a brand new engine for 2017, we will develop an evolution of the actual [current] engine and Andrea gave us the feedback we needed to understand which character of the engine to develop, according to his experience and needs."

With Iannone's teammate Alex Rins missing the test altogether because of injuries sustained in a crash last week at Valencia, test rider Takuya Tsuda will be Suzuki's sole representative at Jerez for the next two days.

Barbera tops first day

Of those present at Jerez on Wednesday, Hector Barbera (Avintia Ducati) set the pace with a best time of 1m39.614s, 0.125s up on Kawasaki's World Superbike champion Jonathan Rea.

Among the MotoGP contingent, Ducati riders filled out the top four places, with Barbera's teammate Loris Baz second quickest ahead of Alvaro Bautista (Aspar) and Scott Redding (Pramac). Aprilia's Aleix Espargaro was the best factory rider in fifth, just under half a second off Bautista's pace.

Besides Suzuki, the only other team with a factory rider in attendance was KTM, with Bradley Smith ending the day 2.748s off the pace, half a second behind tester Mika Kallio.

Testing times (Wednesday - combined MotoGP and WSBK)

Pos.	Rider	Bike	Champ.	Time/Gap
1	Hector Barbera	Ducati	MotoGP	1'39.614
2	Jonathan Rea	Kawasaki	WSBK	+0.125
3	Loris Baz	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.192
4	Alvaro Bautista	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.248
5	Scott Redding	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.471
6	Aleix Espargaro	Aprilia	MotoGP	+0.472
7	Michele Pirro	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.478
8	Andrea Iannone	Suzuki	MotoGP	+0.535
9	Jack Miller	Honda	MotoGP	+0.726
10	Chaz Davies	Ducati	WSBK	+0.795
11	Danilo Petrucci	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.818
12	Karel Abraham	Ducati	MotoGP	+0.870
13	Tom Sykes	Kawasaki	WSBK	+0.997
14	Alex Lowes	Yamaha	WSBK	+1.371
15	Lorenzo Savadori	Aprilia	WSBK	+1.434
16	Marco Melandri	Ducati	WSBK	+1.674
17	Leon Camier	MV Agusta	WSBK	+1.872
18	Eugene Laverty	Aprilia	WSBK	+2.078
19	Michael van der Mark	Yamaha	WSBK	+2.216
20	Mika Kallio	KTM	MotoGP	+2.275
21	Takuya Tsuda	Suzuki	MotoGP	+2.389
22	Bradley Smith	KTM	MotoGP	+2.748
23	Hiroshi Aoyama	Honda	MotoGP	+2.917
24	Sam Lowes	Aprilia	MotoGP	+3.407