Round eight of the Superbike World Championship continues for the Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team at the Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic.
With Bradley Ray having undergone shoulder surgery, it is Roberto Tamburini who stands in for the Brit this weekend, a rider who already competed with Sandro Carusi’s team in last year’s WorldSBK championship.
Yesterday was not an easy day for the Italian rider, with rain then followed by a technical problem. With a time of 1’36”055, Roberto completed practice in twenty-second place.
Today, after refining the setup of his Yamaha during FP3, Tamburini was back out for Superpole. Able to improve significantly on his lap time (1’33”575), the Italian qualified in twenty-first place. This meant a place on the seventh row of the grid for the afternoon’s race, which began in the rain. The team and rider chose to mount rain tyres but unfortunately, just a few laps in, the rain stopped and the track began to dry. Tamburini was therefore forced to pit in order to switch his rain tyres for slicks. Once back on track, Roberto gave it his all but was unable to do more than nineteenth place.
The Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team will be back on track tomorrow for the Superpole Race and the second Superbike race.
"We knew it wouldn’t be an easy race, also because we lost a lot of time in yesterday’s practices. Today’s track conditions definitely didn’t help Roberto to express his, or our bike’s, potential”.
Roberto Tamburini #20
“Today we paid for the time we lost yesterday, which prevented us from preparing our bike as we’d have liked. My fastest lap in Superpole was then cancelled due to yellow flags and so I started quite far back on the grid. The weather made for a difficult race, and we didn’t make the right tyre choice. But we gave it our all and collected data that can be useful as we prepare for tomorrow’s races. A big thank you to the entire team for their great work.”
