Pata Yamaha’s Andrea Locatelli stepped up in Phillip Island scoring a podium in the closing race of WorldSBK’s opening round. For almost everyone in WorldSBK, this year was going to be all about Alvaro Bautista versus Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu, but at the first time of asking we got two podiums for Michael Rinaldi and one for Locatelli, in the full distance Race Two.
Yes, Rea and in particular his own teammate Razgatlioglu were in crisis by their normal standards in Race Two, but Locatelli had looked good in everything except Superpole qualifying, in testing and in the races.
Fourth, fifth and third place race results put him second overall after round one, albeit 28 points behind the phenomenal Bautista. “In the end, we get a lot of gap with respect to Bautista,” said ‘Loka’ about his second full distance race at PI. “We know that here was a bit difficult, but I’m really happy about our weekend.
In the end, no mistakes during the race. “I was a little bit struggling,” he continued. “Especially in Superpole because we started from P9 so it was not easy, especially yesterday on the wet.