Plate-spinning has to stop
Suzuki seem to have simply bitten off more than they can chew with two new riders, a host of new technical staff, all of which has been compounded by having a MotoGP rookie who has already missed half the season through injury. They’ve struggled to get to grips with the bike, due in part to Andrea Iannone’s crew chief Marco Rigamonti also being a new arrival. He has come with his fellow Italian from Ducati to a machine he doesn’t know. And it’s been made worse by Iannone’s sometimesdifficult attitude, with reports leaking out of disharmony in the Suzuki garage due to his attitude, frequent outbursts of anger, and his refusal to speak technically in anything but Italian, much to the consternation of his Japanese engineers, French tyre technicians and Swedish suspension gurus. Most crews prefer to work in English. But things could get better soon with the reappearance of veteran crew chief Tom O’Kane in recent weeks. Most recently Aleix Espargaró’s chief, he was pushed into a behind-thescenes role in 2017 to allow Rigamonti to move in. The genius behind the very first datalogging and telemetry in GP racing, O’Kane is both intimately familiar with the GSX-RR and has a reputation as a cool-headed crew chief.
‘Reports suggest Iannone only speaks Italian on technical issues’