{"id":649731,"date":"2026-05-04T20:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649731\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T20:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:47:15","slug":"ducati-rider-hails-special-hungary-worldsbk-podium-after-early-season-rebuild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649731\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducati rider hails \u201cspecial\u201d Hungary WorldSBK podium after early-season rebuild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">A Race 2 podium at the Hungarian WorldSBK was \u201cspecial\u201d for Yari Montella after an up-and-down start to the 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Montella was third in Race 2, behind the two factory Ducatis but ahead of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/wsbk\/racer\/1019152\/lorenzo-baldassarri\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lorenzo Baldassarri<\/a> who had been third in the Superpole Race. It was his first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/wsbk\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Superbike<\/a> podium since Race 1 at Phillip Island and came at a circuit Montella had struggled at in 2025.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI feel happy, because it was something special,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/wsbk\/racer\/1044087\/yari-montella\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Yari Montella<\/a> told WorldSBK.com after Race 2 in Hungary.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cPodium after Phillip Island, here in Balaton that it\u2019s not one of my favourite tracks, it\u2019s something more because it means that we worked really good.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWe made a good job because at the end, after Portimao, after two crashes, we used Assen to start to build my feeling again on the bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cHere also, we started from FP1 to start to build my feeling in this track, and then session-by-session we improve.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cSo, so happy, so proud about my team, about the work that we\u2019ve done in the garage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Montella explained that he\u2019d needed to make a step in order to achieve that podium in Race 2 after missing pace compared to Baldassarri in the Superpole Race.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cAfter the [Superpole Race] I saw the lap times of Balda [Lorenzo Baldassarri], I think was not on our range,\u201d Montella said.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThen after the Superpole Race we made something different on the bike, we changed something, and we changed also the rhythm.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe Superpole Race was quite strange because the first start I missed the first turn, I was ride.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cAt the end, I was behind, try to build the race. The second start, the start was good, then Balda overtook me in a hard move and I lost some positions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIn the Superpole Race it was difficult to overtake again the other riders; I had my team-mate Alvaro [Bautista] in front of me and I struggled a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Baldassarri actually helped Montella in Race 2 when he went wide with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/wsbk\/racer\/995293\/alvaro-bautista\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alvaro Bautista<\/a> at turn 15 on the first lap, allowing the Barni rider into third place.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIn Race 2, I saw the chaos of the first lap and I used this chaos to open a gap because [on lap one] Balda overtook someone, they were wide, I had a free way and I said \u2018Now I need to push to try to see what happens\u2019,\u201d Montella said.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI started to push some laps to open the gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cFortunately, at the end, I had a gap to manage, [even] if we struggled a bit with the rear tyre with the grip on the left side. Anyway, we took home an important podium, so happy for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Race 2 podium at the Hungarian WorldSBK was \u201cspecial\u201d for Yari Montella after an up-and-down start to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,6908,806,805,803,804,85,215593],"class_list":["post-649731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barni-spark-racing-team","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports","tag-yari-montella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}