Ecstar Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone was again left rueing what could have been after a slight error on the brakes saw him crash out of a potential podium spot at the Qatar MotoGP round.

The Italian clipped the rear of reigning champion Marc Marquez at turn five and went down with only ten laps left to run - a mirror of his performances last year when he fell out of podium spots multiple times - after the Honda man slowed more than Iannone expected.

“I tried to manage the risks, but when Marquez slowed unfortunately I made a mistake. I didn’t realise that he could be so slow in this corner and I entered it like I did in previous laps. So I hit him, and I crashed. It’s one of those things that can happen, but it shouldn’t happen,” said Iannone, speaking at the track.

“Right now it’s not easy for us to overtake, because we struggle with the brakes, but this is not an excuse. The problem is I made a mistake, but I shouldn’t be making these errors. I hope that it’s the first and the last of this year.”

Iannone was pretty upbeat about his pace, however, and said he was surprised to be so fast given the front-end problems he had during winter testing.

“We could have finished in third place and this would have been a great achievement, because we did not expect to have this potential after our difficulties in testing. We arrived at the race very competitive, and this is positive.”