Xavi Vierge led the charge for Pata Maxus Yamaha on the first race day of the 2026 FIM Superbike World Championship, until an unexpected high-side ended his potential for a top-eight finish at Phillip Island in Australia today.
The Spaniard qualified on the third row of the grid in his debut race for Yamaha’s Official Team, having found more confidence on his R1 WorldSBK in Free Practice 3 this morning. With a good race start as the lights went out this afternoon, Vierge was up into the top seven in the opening laps and looked set to bank a solid point-scoring finish. Unfortunately, on Lap 17 of 22, the #97 suffered a high-speed crash coming out of the exit of Turn 3 which ended his promising run.
Teammate Andrea Locatelli and his crew worked to improve from a challenging Friday on the island – however, a P15 grid position made it tough to come through the field and a lack of feeling with both the tyres and his bike set-up were compounded across the race distance. Finishing 13th was also not the result he or the team wanted, but the data collected will allow further analysis to be completed overnight in preparation for the final day.
Warm Up starts tomorrow morning at 10:30 local time (GMT+11), with the Superpole Race beginning at 13:00 before the last feature race “Down Under” at 16:00.
FULL SUPERPOLE RESULTS
FULL RACE ONE RESULTS
Andrea Locatelli – SP: P15 / Race 1: P13
“For sure, one of the most difficult races – I don’t know why, but we (as a team) and also me… we are honestly struggling. Basically, in some parts of the track it’s quite difficult to get a good feeling and in the end, the final set-up choice we made for the race was probably not the best for our bike here in Phillip Island. We need to learn and try to understand which is the direction to go in to regain the feeling, and maybe also to decide to use the optional specification rear tyre and then try again. Tomorrow, we have two more races, we will try to learn something and push until the end of the weekend.”
Xavi Vierge – SP: P9 / Race 1: DNF
“We didn’t end the Saturday like we wanted and like we deserved, but I think we did a very good job in our preparation. In FP3, we found something better than yesterday – that was the goal. With the race tyre and also the qualifying tyre, I felt quite good and I did a decent lap. Our goal was to try to be on the first three rows for the race and we achieved that also, so really happy with that. The race started very well and I made a good start to be in the mix. Unfortunately, lap-by-lap I started to struggle with the tyres, but I was trying to manage and to fight with this position until the end. With five or maybe four laps to go, in Turn 3 something strange happened and I had a crazy high-side on the exit. The team is now working to understand what was going on and we will try to be again ready tomorrow to make two good races.”
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