Negotiations for 2019 World Superbike season are in progress, also for what concerns the new teams that may join the championship. One of these is GRT Yamaha, Italian squad that won World Supersport title last year with Lucas Mahias.
Yamaha Motor Europe wants to line up four Factory R1s in WorldSBK and this was confirmed also by Yamaha Road Racing Project Manager Andrea Dosoli. These two additional bikes should be given to GRT Yamaha, whose Team Manager Filippo Conti spoke with us about it: “It’s something we want to carry out with Yamaha and we are working together to find the resources needed. World Superbike campaign takes a lot of money to come true and we’ve been working with Yamaha to implement it and make it sustainable on the medium term.”
What about the riders? “Yamaha wants to sign a top rider and one rider from World Supersport”, said Filippo Conti. “The short list includes names such as Federico Caricasulo and Lucas Mahias, who are already competing with us in Supersport, and also Sandro Cortese. We would like to confirm Caricasulo and Mahias, but we’ll talk about it to Yamaha.”
In the photo, GRT Yamaha celebrates Misano win with Federico Caricasulo. Credit: Yamaha Racing.