Doubts cast over Andrea Iannone 2026 WorldSBK season

New doubts have been cast over Andrea Iannone’s participation in the 2026 WorldSBK season.

Iannone was placed on the provisional entry list for the 2026 World Superbike Championship when it was published in December. He was listed as riding for the Cainam Racing team, with Cainam being Iannone’s ‘maniac’ nickname spelled backwards.

The team was set to be organised by Iannone and his manager, Gelete Nieto, and was slated to run a Ducati for the Italian.

However, Italian publication GPOne has now reported that Iannone and Cainam have missed deadlines related to the logistical organisation of the team, whose formation began late considering Ducati wanted its satellite teams to place their orders for 2026 bikes in July of 2025 and Cainam only became a publicly known entity in December.

As a result, Iannone is now set to miss the Australian Round on 20–22 February, GPOne reports, and his participation in the remainder of the season – all 11 round of which are based in Europe – is also still not guaranteed.

The first race for Iannone if he proceeded with the Cainam plans would be the Portuguese Round at Portimao on 27–29 March, but at this point it’s likely he would be going there – with a newly formed team and on a new-for-2026 Panigale motorcycle – without any testing.

A year away from racing is not a certainty if Iannone decides not to proceed with World Superbike, or is otherwise unable to compete in the series, because the new MotoGP Bagger World Cup series is an option for the Italian, GPOne reports.

The rider roster for the first year of the championship is yet to be confirmed, and the first race is not until April at the Circuit of the Americas. From there, the series will exist solely in Europe this year with races in Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, Aragon, and Austria completing the series’ inaugural season.