Yari Montella (Barni Spark Racing Team) claimed the sixth podium of his MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship career, but perhaps this one was a bit more emotional. It was the #5’s first rostrum on home soil as he finished third in Race 1 at the Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli”, finishing behind only the factory Ducati duo of Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) and teammate Iker Lecuona.
Montella headed to Misano on the back of a troubled weekend at MotorLand Aragon, where he finished seventh, ninth and crashed out of Race 2. However, his confidence showed no sign of waning in light of that, and he bounced back in style on home soil. He narrowly missed out on a front row start after taking fourth in the Tissot Superpole session, just 0.053s behind Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team), who usurped him into P3 right at the end of the session.
Undeterred, the #5 made a sensational start when the lights went out as he leapfrogged Lowes into third place; the #22 had not got away well and fell down to P5. Montella was running ahead of Lorenzo Baldassarri (Team GoEleven) with around half a second between them when ‘Balda’ lost the front of his Panigale V4R machine at Turn 5 and crashed, retiring from the race. That gave Montella a relatively comfortable margin to Lowes in P4, before the #22 had to fight with teammate Axel Bassani, allowing Montella to extend his lead over the Bimota duo, and he duly converted that into a first WorldSBK rostrum on home soil.
Discussing his first WorldSBK rostrum in Italy, Montella said: “It’s unbelievable! It’s something incredible; it was my goal to earn my first podium here in Italy, but to make that a reality means a lot. I was thinking before the race, ‘I hope today will be the day’. I’m super happy, we worked well, and we needed something like this after Aragon. A podium here, in front of my family and my fans, is something special. I was a bit nervous this morning, but honestly, I just focused on enjoying it, and I found that before the race, it helped me calm down before Race 1. I was able to focus and give my all. I pushed from the beginning until the end.”
Only once this season has Montella managed to take more than one rostrum in a single weekend. That was at the Autodrom Most just under a month ago, when he finished P3 in all three races, and he’ll be aiming to repeat that at Misano on Sunday as he battles with Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) and Alex Lowes for P3 in the Championship. Saturday’s results mean the #5 has moved back into P3 after Sam Lowes crashed out.
Expanding on his goals for Sunday, the 26-year-old said: “We need to analyse and try to improve, because tomorrow is another day. We have two races, most likely hotter than on Saturday, so I need to improve my feeling. At the end of Race 1, I was struggling with the front tyre dropping, which was the rough spot of the race for me. I will just focus on riding my race, and we will for sure aim for the podium again.”
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