After a dramatic day at the TT Circuit Assen for Andrea Locatelli (Pata Yamaha with BRIXX WorldSBK), the Italian rookie was able to stand on the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship podium for the first time after he claimed third place in Race 2 at the Prosecco DOC Dutch Round.

The reigning WorldSSP Champion had crossed the line in the Tissot Superpole Race in third place and thought he had his first podium in the 10-lap race to set the grid for Race 2, but he was deemed to have exceeded track limits on the final lap and was therefore demoted one place behind Michael Ruben Rinaldi (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) to fourth. At the time, it was his best WorldSBK result to date and it also assured him of a second row start for Race 2.

Locatelli was able to take advantage of the Turn 1 incident between teammate Toprak Razgatlioglu and Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team) to take the lead of the race; the first time he had led a race in WorldSBK. The rookie, promoted straight into the factory Yamaha outfit for 2021 after his success in 2020, led for 10 of the 21 laps in Race 2 before Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK) overtook him, and Scott Redding (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) demoted him to third on Lap 19.

Reacting to his first WorldSBK podium, he said: “I’m really happy to get the podium and to do it in the long race is really amazing. In the Superpole Race, you need to push but also, it’s shorter. Today, in Race 2, I got first position immediately and I had good grip. In the end, I fell a lot with the rear tyre. Maybe if we have more laps, maybe we couldn’t finish the race because I lost some time. When we arrived here, if the conditions are like today and yesterday with the sun, we can push. I learnt and improved every race. We are faster and now I’m at the front. We closed to the front all weekend and it’s very amazing and so happy for my staff and my crew, because we worked very well. We don’t make any mistakes and the bike is so amazing.”

Locatelli is working with Crew Chief Andrew Pitt for the 2021 campaign, with WorldSBK race winner Pitt full of praise for the Italian. He said: “The result was definitely a turnaround in form, but we’ve seen his speed, he was right at the front at the Navarra test. He was fifth at Estoril. There’s been some other ups and downs with his result.”

Explaining the plan for Assen where Locatelli recorded results of fifth, fourth and third throughout the weekend, Pitt said: “We kept the plan very simple on Friday, tried to work on identifying the tyres that would do the race. There’s always high tyre wear here. The mean thing with Locatelli is keeping him calm, not letting him get too into the details and we saw the circuit suits his flowing style. I think he uses the tyre better than anyone else in the race. That helped him a lot. He does laps together with his teammate, Toprak’s great, he’s always willing to help him and it was good this time that we were able to work a little bit together. We tried to shorten the workload between Phil and myself to test different tyres and cover the work together because we both had good pace. We’re able to get to a solution a little bit quicker with the tyres and Locatelli’s pace was good. His improved qualifying helped him with the races. He wasn’t coming off the fifth row of the grid and being totally honest, I thought we might’ve been able to get a top six here. The step he made today blew me away! I think something’s really unlocked inside of him now and I think you’ll see a different guy. What he did in the first ten laps today was amazing, he stretched the gap out to 1.2 or 1.3 seconds. I think we started to see the best of Loca today.”

Don’t miss any action from WorldSBK in 2021 using the WorldSBK VideoPass!