Andrea Iannone on Portimao WorldSBK fire: “Sometimes it happens”

Andrea Iannone’s practice at this weekend’s WorldSBK Portuguese Round was compromised at the beginning by a rear brake issue, but the Italian was accepting of the problem afterwards.

The Italian was not the only rider to suffer technical issues in the morning. Garret Gerloff's Kawasaki suffered an issue around mid-way through the session, and Toprak Razgatlioglu didn't complete a lap in FP1 as a result of a technical problem with his BMW.

But Iannone's was perhaps the most spectacular problem as his rear brake problem has resulted in a fire by the time he arrived back in pit lane.

The Go Eleven Ducati rider was fourth-fastest at the end of the opening day of World Superbike's second round of 2025, despite his issue in the morning, which perhaps aided his ability to brush off the FP1 problem that cost him several minutes at the beginning of the session.

“I think sometimes it’s possible that it happens,” Iannone said of his FP1 issue, speaking to WorldSBK.com.

“Today we had a technical problem on the rear brake and at the end we had a fire, so the rear brake completely broke.

“So, I think the [only choice] I have is to come back to the garage – when I arrive we see the fire, but I think the team were really fast to recover everything and I came back on track really fast.

“So, yes, I think it’s better when everything is fine, but in any case sometimes it happens.”

Iannone was nonetheless happy with his day as it marked an improvement over last year’s Portimao race when he felt he struggled.

“Not bad because last year I struggled a little bit in this track – always, in general, I struggled a little bit in this track,” he said.

“Sincerely, it’s a really good track, but not easy for many things, because it’s important you have everything fitted well, especially on the electronics side it’s not easy.

“But step-by-step, day-by-day we improve with the team, also the relationship between me and the electronics guys has improved.

“So, for this, at the end my expectation is good because I think we closed not in a bad way, I think we have a good chance, but for sure we need to improve something, some tenths – it’s really important to fight for the first five positions.”

The Italian followed his compatriot, Nicolo Bulega, in FP2, and was able to spot some differences between the characteristics of his Ducati and that of the factory rider.

“For sure, we have many differences,” Iannone said.

“He, in the last sector, is unbelievable because he has a lot of traction – more than me, and we need to understand why because in general I know the bike is the same, but we will see.

“We will study which difference we have and we try to compare, we try to recover this gap.

“I think at the end, in the other points of the track, it’s not bad, I’m quite good, but the thing is compared to last year I’m more confident, my feeling is better.

“This is the target: to improve on last year, but in any case we are here and we try to fight.”