Andrea Iannone | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Iannone at the 2010 Australian Grand Prix.
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Nationality | Italian | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born |
Vasto, Italy |
9 August 1989 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Current team | Team Suzuki Ecstar | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bike number | 29 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Andrea Iannone (born 9 August 1989) is an Italian professional MotoGP rider who currently competes in the MotoGP world championship, for the factory Suzuki team.
Iannone was born in the Adriatic coastal town of Vasto, on August 9, 1989, and again like any other motorcycle rider his interest in bikes came at a very early age. Like many other top riders, he refined his riding abilities first in Minamoto's, Iannone also has one older brother called Angelo who follows Andrea to all the tracks.
Born in Vasto, Province of Chieti, Iannone – like many other riders – started his career on pocket bikes and soon became a championship front runner. He participated in both the Italian and Spanish championships before moving to World Championship in 2005. On 4 May 2008, Iannone claimed his first win at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, in wet conditions. Prior to the victory, he had never finished higher than ninth, at the Turkish and French Grands Prix in 2007, although he had previously qualified as high as seventh. In the 2009 125cc season he won the first two races of the season, establishing himself as a championship contender, however he faded to seventh overall, with only one more win. During the race at Misano, Iannone provoked an accident with Pol Espargaró. After the incident, images showed the riders arguing in the gravel and Iannone headbutted Espargaró. This was heavily criticised by the media and lost Iannone some sponsorship; Iannone then apologised to Espargaró at the next race at Estoril.
In 2010, Iannone moved up to the new Moto2 series, his first time riding anything other than an Aprilia. After a slow start he took victories at Mugello and Assen – both from pole – making him the first rider to take two poles in the class, to move up to fourth overall in the standings. He was also competitive in Barcelona, but received a ride-through penalty for overtaking Yuki Takahashi under yellow flag conditions. He then went on to win again at Motorland Aragón, a track which was new to the MotoGP calendar in 2010.