Yamaha’s WorldSBK Racing Manager reflects on Phillip Island

WorldSBK 2024

Yamaha’s Dosoli reflects on season opener

The 2024 FIM Superbike World Championship exploded into action at Phillip Island last weekend, and it was a rollercoaster weekend for Yamaha Racing.

Italian rider Andrea Locatelli fought for victory in all three of the WorldSBK races, bringing home two second-place finishes for the Pata Prometeon Yamaha team, while Stefano Manzi also took second in the Supersport class for Pata Yamaha Ten Kate Racing.

The GYTR GRT Yamaha Team also experienced some challenges despite both Remy Gardner and Dominique Aegerter showing strong pace, while it was a challenging weekend for Yamaha debutant Jonathan Rea.  Here’s the verdict on the weekend from Yamaha Motor Europe’s Motorsport R&D and Road Racing Manager, Andrea Dosoli.

Andrea Dosoli

“In general, we can be satisfied about the performance in both World Superbike and World Supersport at Phillip Island, with podiums in both categories and lots of promising signs.  In the first race weekend of the year, you are always looking for confirmation of the performance of both the rider and the technical package and I think we can see from the results that both the R1 and R6 remain competitive. This was even the case despite the challenges we saw with the new surface at Phillip Island, which resulted in flag-to-flag races in both classes.

“It was clear to see that Andrea Locatelli made a big step. Not only was this clear from his performance, but for me the biggest thing was his approach to the weekend. Before heading to Phillip Island, Andrea and his crew chief Tom O’Kane had a very clear target in mind – they wanted to win a race, and their performance on track shows they can achieve this.

“I think we can say that this weekend Andrea has shown a new level of maturity as throughout the weekend he displayed a winning mentality; he is thinking like a winner. This is a combination of the steps he has taken himself, but also what he has learned from his new crew chief so I would like to congratulate both Andrea and his crew for this. It is just a matter of time before his first WorldSBK win now.

“In both the Superpole Race and Race 2 he was the quickest rider on the track making an impressive series of overtakes. It was only the unlucky false neutral on the last lap which prevented him winning in Race 2, I am 100% convinced he deserved the win in that race.  Of course he is disappointed with the result of the last race, but these things happen in racing – the most important thing is he showed his potential to fight at the front. Locatelli can be a title contender this season.

“The GYTR GRT Yamaha riders did a good job this weekend, which maybe was not fully represented by their final results for a number of reasons.  Dominique had not ridden a bike since November due to his viral infection and it was so bad that in January and February not only could he not ride, but he couldn’t train either.

“What he achieved and the way he rode this week was very impressive. He was very tired after the first day of testing and had a lot of blisters on his hands, so there was some worry but Domi is one of the fittest riders we have so even despite missing the months of training, he was able to show good speed and score important points. It was the first time he had ridden a bike this year and even without preparation he showed a lot of speed, which is a positive start.

“It was a positive performance from Remy too. He really deserved a much better result than what he achieved, as in the first race he was taken out by another rider while in the leading group. He suffered bad luck in Race 2 as well, firstly as he was behind Toprak when he had the engine difficulty and this meant Remy had to slow down to avoid him, and then, he was behind Jonathan when he crashed and could not avoid his bike, in fact Remy had to jump over it! He brought the bike back to the pits and in the short time we had the crew were able to repair the damage for him to start the race, but he had to start from the back of the grid and let’s say the bike was not 100% perfect, more like 90%!

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“Despite this, he still managed to finish 12th and score a few points, on top of a brilliant ride in the Superpole race which saw him fight for the podium, showing his true speed.

“Nobody could have imagined such a difficult start to Jonathan’s time with Yamaha. Since the first laps in Phillip Island with the new asphalt, he did not have a good feeling with the bike and despite a lot of work from the crew, we did not see any progress with his feeling until Sunday. The big crash on Tuesday didn’t help things, but I believe I am not wrong to say that the stress of the difficult start with a six-time world champion did not help the work of the crew either.   

“On Sunday, when the feeling was better, he had another big crash which brought a very difficult weekend to the end, without doubt one of Jonathan’s worst weekends in WorldSBK. We need to take responsibility for this, as we did not give Jonathan what he needed in Phillip Island. We have to learn from these difficulties and the mistakes made during the weekend.  Clearly, there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of bike set-up, but I think also in the working method.

“The crew, supported by all of the Yamaha engineers, will work harder than ever to be better prepared for the upcoming test. We have two days in Barcelona to reset and get back on track so we can start our 2024 season properly for the Barcelona race.  Jonathan has all the talent and capability, we know the bike works, so we know that this can be a successful partnership.

“For Supersport, it has been a challenging winter for us as the new rules force us to homologate a new engine specification for the R6. But I can say the result has been positive as the R6 has shown that it can be competitive. Manzi was one of the quickest riders in the class all weekend and there is a lot of potential there.

“The weather hurt him in qualifying, but he showed in Warm Up he could go a lot faster.  He was penalised heavily by the extreme wear of the tyre on the new surface, which forced him to ride differently. He could not exploit his full speed as he needed to focus on tyre life. After the podium in race one, he changed his strategy to conserve the rear tyre by trying to make up the time on corner entry but we can now say this was a mistake as this caused the crash.  We have to learn from this as if he wants to fight for the title he needs to score as many points as possible in every single race, taking the situation into account. In this moment, I can see that we have a very quick rider in Manzi who can fight for the title, especially as it is his second year with the bike and the team.

“In Debise and Mahias, they need a little more time to understand the bike but they showed speed at the weekend so this is promising. It was also nice to see wildcard Tom Toparis take a top ten on his R6.”

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WorldSBK Race Two Results

WorldSBK Superpole Race Results

WorldSBK Race One Results

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