Andrea Iannone literally found himself in the hot seat at Aprilia when the engine ꧑on his RS-GP exploded on the Valencia mai꧙n straight, during the final day of this week's MotoGP test.

The Italian fortunately kept control and, having stopped, calmly ಌheld the bike upright while marshals successfully extinguished the blaze (see below).

But Iannone wasn't quite so relaxed upon his return to the pits. Th💫e live TV broadcast picked up some angry words directed towards the team, the #29 𒊎fearing the consequences if he had hit the wall at 300km/h and saying he had warned the bike was not running right.

Iannone h🔯ad calmed down by the close of testing, explaining the engine had been taken to the limit in pursuit of more horsepower, by running at a higher RPM for longer.

"In a dangerous situation it's normal to be frightened or angry," Iannone said of the 🎃moments after the fire.

"We tried a different solution to improve power, so we tried to push the bike a little bit more oꦐn the limit and this happened.

"But it's always like this. If we try, we uꦐnderstand. If we don’t try, w🉐e remain at the same level and understand nothing."

With the radically-revised 2020 Aprilia not due to debut untﷺil Sepang in February, pushing t🔯he existing components harder, plus some electronics work, was one of the main data gathering exercises for Iannone and team-mate Aleix Espargaro at the Valencia test.

"The positive is that we continued to work ꦛevery day to improve the bike. We never give up," Iannone said.

"The engine brake improved ꦅa lot. We also worke⛦d on traction control.

"For the Jerez test we wilﷺl re-try different solutions we used during the season, while we wait for t♐he new bike to arrive at Sepang."

Espargaro was 16th, Iannone 19th and test rider Bradley S🐼mith 21st on the final day at Valencia.