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Michael Ruben Rinaldi’s future was announced on Wednesday morning as he joins GMT94 Yamaha in the FIM Supersport World Championship. Rinaldi was with Team Motocorsa Racing in 2024 in WorldSBK but with results hard to come by, the team opted to sign Ryan Vickers for 2025. That left the #21 without a WorldSBK seat but his future has been secured as he joins GMT94 Yamaha in WorldSSP as a Yamaha rider, hoping to take the R9 machine to the title in its first season.

Rinaldi first moved into WorldSBK with the Aruba.it Racing – Junior Team after claiming the STK1000 title in 2017, when he beat two-time WorldSBK Champion Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team). After his rookie season, he stayed on Ducati machinery but joined the Barni Spark Racing Team in 2019 before Team GoEleven in 2020, which would prove to be a breakthrough for the Italian.

He took the first of wins at MotorLand Aragon in 2020 and that, coupled with two other podiums at the same venue, secured him a seat with the factory Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team for 2021. He was a race winner that season too, taking two wins on home soil at Misano before winning in Barcelona for his third of the year. After a winless 2022, he returned to the top step of the rostrum in 2023 at Aragon but he wasn’t able to keep his seat, instead linking up with Motocorsa Ducati. It had been expected the partnership would work out for both parties, but the highlight was a P6 in Race 2 at Phillip Island, and Rinaldi was unable to keep that seat.

For 2025, he’ll join the World Supersport grid and on this move, he said: “It has been a big announcement for my career because, after many years in WorldSBK with Ducati, now it’s time for a new chapter in my life and my career. This will be Yamaha. I’m a Yamaha rider inside the GMT94 Team to defending the blue colours. The project is new, the bike is new, and I decided to accept this challenge because I truly believe Yamaha is the right bike to face a battle with Ducati. They decided to replace the R6 with the R9 and since the first meeting with them, I felt their will to win and accepted the challenge. I can’t wait to jump on the bike.”

In the announcement, Yamaha Motor Europe Sporting Director, Niccolo Canepa, referenced that the R9 bike would need a ‘big-bike’ style to get the most out of, something which Rinaldi has experience of in abundance. The five-time WorldSBK race winner discussed this and an upcoming test for the Yamaha WorldSSP riders at Cremona this week, where he revealed he couldn’t ride the bike just yet.

He added: “The work they’ve done is not just for catching other manufacturers, but also, I spoke with Niccolo, and we think that, coming from WorldSBK, we don’t have to adapt the riding style too much. That test should be the plan, but we didn’t find an agreement with my old team so I can’t ride the bike until next year.”

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