Ecstar Suzuki's Andrea Iannone has revealed that his transition from Ducati to the GSX-RR was even more difficult than it looked but kept faith with Davide Brivio's team to build for a better 2018.

The Italian started the season brightly but then faded and crashed a lot more than was entirely necessary. Talks of a mid-season sacking were rife but a test at Aragon in September saw a turnaround and Iannone scored 33 points from the last four races.

Despite the first race in Qatar being a good one, we started to struggle a little bit and it took me a long time to get used to the Suzuki machine. My crew chief Marco Rigamonti and myself were new to Team Suzuki, meaning that we had to start from the scratch with the bike knowledge and with the working philosophy of the Japanese company.

“Every MotoGP team is different and when you come from many years with a specific environment it’s really complicated to change your way to approach the work and also to face problems. But as time passes in the garage you learn to trust your colleagues and you take advantage of the huge number of things they can explain and teach you about the bike.

“Patience and focus are the key of success, this is something I’ve always believed in. And this has been proved this year again. We kept on working, little-by-little, step-by-step. We got into a lot of frustration but even in the darkest times, we never lost our faith in hard work.

“Finally, in Brno and then in Aragon, some new technical solutions on the machine reassured our beliefs: We found the mistakes, we had some solutions and 2018 looked brighter after that. This came from the teamwork, which is the key."

Despite all this, speculation is still rife that Iannone will be replaced by Jonathan Rea in 2019.