SBK: Andrea Locatelli’s never-ending crisis: this Yamaha is torture

Last year Andrea Locatelli was a constant presence in the top 5 of the Superbike World Championship. He took his first win at Assen and finished the championship in fourth place, as in 2023. In five seasons with the YZF-R1 his worst final result was seventh in 2024, otherwise always in the top five.

The plan for 2026 was supposed to be a definitive takeoff, riding the momentum of a two-year deal as Yamaha Europe’s lead rider. Instead, it’s a nightmare: two-thirds of the way through he’s only eleventh in the standings, with a meager 103 points. His best finish was sixth; he has often drifted and fallen out of the top ten. As in Race 1 at Magny-Cours: in a mini race of just twelve laps, practically a Sprint, he shipped 17 seconds and change to the usual Nicolò Bulega, finishing twelfth out of fourteen classified. Behind him only Danilo Petrucci, also adrift with the BMW, and Alvaro Bautista who remounted after a slip.

After winning the World title in 2021 with Toprak Razgatlioglu, Yamaha had remained at a high level not only with the Turkish superstar, but also with Locatelli himself. When it came time to make the final step to try and poke at Ducati, the tuning-fork brand completely lost direction. The super-concessions don’t help, as they allow the use of engine and chassis components outside homologation, i.e., prototyped. Testing doesn’t help, nor have changes in technical management. In France, crew chief Giulio Nava, one of the paddock’s leading figures, was replaced by Emanuele Martinelli, who worked with Locatelli back in his Grand Prix days, many years ago. All for nothing—the situation won’t budge.

Xavi Vierge isn’t doing much better; he arrived highly motivated but is slowly fading too: in Race 1 he finished tenth, 16 seconds back, in such a short run. The lack of a contract renewal also weighs on the Spaniard’s mind. Worse than walking at night are the other two factory riders, Remy Gardner and Stefano Manzi, the latter of whom was very strong in Supersport last year. Pitch black across the board. It’s true the R1 project is a bit dated, but Yamaha’s commitment in Superbike is massive: two factory teams, the technical base in Italy alongside MotoGP, 60–70 people involved. There’s no lack of connection with the Japanese racing department either. Superbike was supposed to be the lifeline, yet this project is in deep crisis too, exactly like in MotoGP.

And yet the technical potential, beneath the surface, is there. At the Suzuka 8 Hours Yamaha was flying, and Andrea Locatelli himself proved he’s anything but a spent force, guiding the factory team to second place, right on the heels of the Honda starship. The comparison is a bit forced, because Endurance regulations differ from the World Championship’s. But it seems almost impossible that the gap between the two configurations is so wide. In place of Xavi Vierge, Jack Miller is reported to be coming—a talented rider and the right type to step into a box in deep crisis and try to fix the situation. But we’re talking about 2027, while there are still three rounds plus the two Magny-Cours races left to run.

"We tried to do our best," the rider from Bergamo commented after Race 1 in France. "It wasn’t easy; the front and overall handling were the main points to work on today, in both starts. We’re not fully satisfied with the result, but we look ahead, keep working hard, and aim to do better. We still have time and we know we can make a big step forward to show our true potential."

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