Isaac Viñales has a very busy year ahead of him. If a few days ago the rider from Llansá announced his incorporation to the Wójcik Racing Team to compete in the FIM Endurance World Championship, hoy the arrival of Isaac at TPR by Viñales Racing has been made official to compete in WorldSBK from the first European event that will host the Assen TT Circuit.
Ángel Viñales, father of Maverick, reached an agreement with Lucio Pedercini last December to collaborate with the Italian team in this prestigious paddock, a collaboration that resulted in a change in the nomenclature of the Pedercini team, from now on baptized as TPR by Viñales Racing.
And today, less than a month before the start of the SBK World Championship in Australia, the Italian structure has confirmed that Isaac Viñales will be its permanent pilot for the entire 2023 courseAlthough the Catalan will miss the first two rounds from Australia to Indonesia and will not form the grid until April 22 and 23, for the Assen round of WorldSBK.
Maverick Viñales’ cousin already knows all the staff of the TPR team after having raced with them last year, when Isaac received the call from Lucio Pedercini to compete in Estoril to replace Loris Cresson. Both parties ended up happy with how that weekend turned out, despite the fact that they failed to finish in the points zone in any of the three races.
Isaac Viñales arrived in the paddock of the Superbike World Championship in 2019, after not achieving the expected results in the Moto2 World Championship; the Catalan had two good seasons in Supersport, where he garnered five podium finishes and a seventh position finish in 2019. In 2021, Team Orelac gave him the opportunity to move up to Superbikes on a Kawasaki ZX-10RR with which Isaac had to complete a long and hard learning process.
In 2022, when the Catalan rider had already closed an agreement with Yamaha Motoxracing to compete in WorldSBK, the Italian structure decided to break the contract that linked them with Isaac just a few days before the start of the championship, leaving Viñales in the lurch.
Now, after 2022 in which Isaac has been competing in several World Endurance events, the 29-year-old seems to have closed 2023 well with the two contracts he has signed together with the Wójcik Racing Team and TPR by Viñales Racing.
“I am very happy to be able to race with TPR by Viñales Racing in 2023”, said the Spanish pilot. “I’m happy to be back in the World Superbike paddock and I’m working hard to give 100% and look forward to the good results that will surely come. I want to thank Lucio, Ángel and the sponsors for the trust they have placed in me”.
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Pedercini, for his part, admits to being “Happy to confirm that Isaac will return to the team with us for the 2023 season. We already worked together in Estoril last year, so we know each other a bit. We are working hard behind the scenes and I am confident that our new team will work well. In any case, we will do our best. We’ll update with more information in the coming weeks on all three, but we’ll be ready for Assen!”