Sensational Silver and Bronze Sunday for Pata Yamaha Prometeon WorldSBK

In Race 2, I am waiting for Michael’s tyre to drop earlier, because he was pushing a lot! I see in the last laps, he has trouble and I push hard – finally last corner I pass him! But I also am on the limit, the front tyre and rear tyre, brakes also many time locking – but we are second position and finish the race. This weekend was really good for me – okay we are not winning, but three times second position and taking good points for the championship. In the Superpole Race, when Jonathan crashed I release the brake directly because I don’t understand what happened, like if the asphalt is wet or dry, and I ride more calm in the last lap. I checked after if I push him outside or not because this is not my style, but then I see he went wide and touched the white line. He tried his best, I understand him! He is a really strong rider and for me always good to fight with him. Thanks to my team, we tried our best – I hope we are fighting for the win in Misano, we will see.

Race 2 was a bit tricky, I don’t know why, but we fight from the beginning with really high vibration in the front and I needed to continue to fight. But actually, until the middle of the race I was quite happy because I was at the back of Toprak and Alex (Lowes), and the rhythm was good, the feeling was good. I continued to fight even with this vibration, but then also with the last five laps I had a big, big drop in tyre grip. In every weekend, something is changing with the conditions, the track and the tyres! Today, after the Superpole Race, I was really positive to have a good Race 2 and we were close to fight for the podium again, but honestly it’s another great weekend. We want every time to try to fight for the podium and this morning, I saw the opportunity that especially in the last sector it was not raining a lot so I tried to push and to recover because to start from P10 was really difficult! To get P3 and start from the front row was really good – I am a bit disappointed then about Race 2, but I have to thank the team and Yamaha for the really good job over the weekend.

Given the nature of the circuit and the challenges we’ve had here before, honestly, three second-place finishes for Toprak feels like three wins - topped up nicely by an awesome podium for Loka this morning in the Superpole Race. Unless you’ve got the outright performance advantage enjoyed by the winner’s package at this track, it’s always about conserving some tyre for the end – and Toprak did that masterfully in Race 2, retaining enough rear grip to mount an incredible chase to Rinaldi in the last couple of laps and securing his third second-place of the weekend. Loka had some technical difficulties in Race 2 which restricted his performance a little bit, but has none-the-less reaffirmed his massively improved level in 2023 and in general has had another great race weekend. On to Misano test next week – thanks to Yamaha, to everyone involved in the project and our extremely hard-working team. The second half of the year offers us more circuits at which we can challenge to win and that’s now very much the target.