Andrea Locatelli (Pata Maxus Yamaha) secured his and Yamaha’s first rostrum of the 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season after a hard-fought Race 1 at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve. The #55 claimed fourth place in a strong Tissot Superpole showing on Saturday morning before converting that into a podium finish during the Pirelli Portuguese Round as he resisted Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team) across the 20-lap race.

“We’ve been working well since yesterday, and now we’ve found a good setup on the bike”: ‘Loka’on his Race 1 success

On his Race 1 podium, Locatelli was pleased but emphasised the need to maintain focus “I’m very happy, we’ve been working well since yesterday, we’ve found a good base setup on the bike. I’m still having a bit of trouble with the front end of the bike, we need to continue to work on this point to try to improve it a bit and close the gap. I’m proud of myself because I never lost focus, I try to be ready in every situation and today that was confirmed. We will see from here, the Championship is quite long and it’s only the second round, we have many different tracks, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I think we will have lots of opportunities to get on the podium and maybe get our first win. We have another possibility tomorrow so let’s see how we react to that.”

Locatelli initially gained positions as the lights went out, moving his Yamaha R1 machine into second place and remaining there until Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) came through as the Turkish star fought his way back from a poor start. Despite falling to third place and losing ground to Razgatlioglu and Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) in first and second, the 2020 WorldSSP Champion was able to withstand considerable pressure from Petrucci behind, with the gap between them rarely exceeding a second and often being around half-a-second. In the end, ‘Petrux’ was unable to pass the Yamaha rider, leaving ‘Loka’ able to celebrate his first podium of the season. When asked what he and his team had changed with their setup to achieve this much-improved result over his 7^th place finish in Australia’s Race 1, Locatelli emphasized the details as much as the intangibles as factors in his success.

“I Always believe in myself, I’ll continue to push to get a good feeling with the bike – Locatelli on what made the difference here in Portimao

“There is the technical part which can be very difficult to understand well, but when we checked the data, we found that we were really fast around sector 2 and sector 3, so when we have a corner, we can be there at the top in the faster sectors like the first and the last. We need to focus on our strengths, it’s difficult to say if the balance is working or not, but that’s not my job, I just need to trust in myself and do my best. I don’t know what I can say aside from that I believe always, I will continue to push, to get a good feeling with the bike, try new things on the bike and work hard with my team.”

Follow Locatelli in the final races of the Poritmao ‘Rollercoaster’ Round Sunday March 30^th at 11:00 local time UTC +1 with the WorldSBK VideoPass!