Mattia Rato makes his Superbike World Championship debut: "It’s not easy to step up from 600 to 1000cc, but I’ll grow

Can the Superbike World Championship be a springboard for young riders? It would seem so. While some riders with a glorious past, such as Alvaro Bautista or Danilo Petrucci, are ready to do battle, several rookies like Alberto Surra and Mattia Rato are stepping onto the scene.

Clearly, they’re starting with small teams and without pressure. This year Motoxracing will serve as a Yamaha nursery with a very young lineup: Bahattin Sofuoglu is 23 and Mattia Rato just 21. The young Lombard rider began racing in 2014, climbing through the CIV’s Minimoto, MiniGP, and PreMoto3 categories. Between 2020 and 2023 he competed in the Moto2 European Championship, taking podiums and finishing fourth overall in the final year. In 2023 he also made his debut in the Moto2 World Championship as a substitute at the Spielberg and Montmeló GPs. Last year he stood out in CIV Supersport 600NG, ending the season in third place thanks to a run of three consecutive wins at the end of the championship.

Mattia Rato is a true rookie in Superbike, but he can do well. His team manager Sandro Carusi is trying to help him grow in the best possible way, step by step and without pressure.

"We didn’t do the official Superbike tests," Mattia Rato tells Corsedimoto. "But I did spend a few days on track with a Yamaha R1 Stock that the team prepared for me. I rode at Portimão, Jerez, Andalucía, and Almería. It all went fairly well. Right now I don’t feel completely comfortable on the 1000 yet. I still need a bit of time; I still feel a bit slow in many phases of riding, but that’s totally normal when stepping up from a 600 to a 1000. In the end, though, the lap times were fairly good. I managed to ride with other World Championship riders, so I’m quite happy. I’d like to improve various aspects, but the weather didn’t help much: I also caught quite a bit of rain. I would have liked to put in more kilometers, but during my two days at Portimão it rained both times. I wanted to prepare better, but that’s how it went."