Double Podium for Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK after an historic 1-2 Superpole

For me, the race was very difficult because I try to win but after eight laps the front tyre dropped and I am just fighting all corners – I try to enter but I lose the front on right corners. After, I understand Bautista is very strong every lap – I don’t understand because he use the softer tyre but looks new. We need to improve tomorrow this and maybe bike set-up or tyre choice. We need to understand tonight and in Warm-Up because we have just one chance, but we will see tomorrow. We will keep fighting, I hope tomorrow we have the first win of 2023, I always try my best also especially today – many times I almost crash but I hope for tomorrow we can improve and I think maybe we are fighting for the win.

It was a strong race and unfortunately we just lost in the first part of the race, when I lost a lot of positions on the start – in the end I just needed to try and improve and recover the gap to the front but I think it was a little too late, so we need to try to be faster on the start better tomorrow. Sometimes we start very well, sometimes it was not easy like today. In the end it was a good result, P3, to be honest we were ready from yesterday because we started working very well but we did not know the rhythm of the other riders. It’s the first big result to start the weekend, and we have tomorrow the Superpole Race and Race 2 to try to improve the bike and fight for the podium again. It’s just the second weekend, but for sure it’s a good way to start the championship – so I want to try and take more good results.

Our Saturday started well with an historic one-two in qualifying that gave us hope for the race. We didn’t win today, but honestly we can have no complaints about the efforts or performance level of the team and riders. In the end the package of Bautista and his bike was unreachable. Alvaro is the World Champion and he’s riding like a World Champion, but the significant weight advantage allowed him to use the softer tyre combination, with good performance for the full race distance, which was simply not possible for our guys. Loka was in slightly stronger shape than Toprak towards the end of the race, but with both riders we’ll look to see what we can do overnight to improve their R1 packages and do everything we can to try and win our first race of the season tomorrow.