Yari Montella: "I’m not thinking about being the team captain

Yari Montella comments on the first day of Superbike free practice at the Misano World Circuit.

Third fastest overall between FP1 and FP2, half a second off leader Bulega. That’s how Yari Montella kicks off the Superbike weekend at Misano, part of an all-Ducati Panigale V4 R top 4 (with Bulega and Lecuona ahead of him, and Sam Lowes behind). Getting off on the right foot matters, but the 26-year-old from Campania knows there’s still a gap to close, especially to the Aruba Ducati duo. Both he and the Barni Spark Racing team know where they need to work, but he also admits he hadn’t planned on being the team’s best rider at the moment (though we should remember Bautista’s injury), but don’t call him the team captain! Nor did he expect to be in the mix for 3rd overall... He also emphasizes a change in mindset to handle every situation as best as possible, along with a clear determination to always extract the maximum.

"Good, but not great." Despite today’s third place, Yari Montella isn’t fully satisfied and looks to Saturday at Misano for further progress. On the technical side, he takes a step back to something specific he tried just under a month ago in testing: "I tried the new swingarm, but I finished the test with the standard one. It worked, but it still needed a few tweaks with race distance in mind. I’m not ruling out using it from here to the end of the season in some weekends to see what comes out." Back to the present, is there a bit more pressure at home or not? "It’s higher, inevitably," he replies. "There will be family, friends, sponsors... But fundamentally it’s a race like the others, we’ve already shown we can be at the front and I don’t see why we can’t do it here too."

"Back in Europe, Lecuona has made a big step, he’s improved a lot," he admitted, looking at the Ducati colleagues who are ahead of him today as well. "We haven’t gone backwards, but we’re still missing something compared to the leaders. We’re working to close that gap, there are things we can improve—both me in my riding and the team with the bike." On the other side of the box, a world champion like Alvaro Bautista has arrived, but right now Montella is the team’s spearhead. "If you’d told me at the start of the season that I’d be there fighting for 3rd in the championship... Phew, I would’ve said, ‘What are you talking about? Be serious, come on!’ We were thinking about doing better than last year; I was aiming for the top 5, which was already hard to reach, but now if on a bad day I finish 5th, I’ll take it. We’ve really changed our mindset." He also stresses that "I’m not thinking about being the team captain, rather about improving myself and doing the maximum."

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