Since Yamaha's return to WorldSBK competition in 2016, Crescent Racing has operated the project in direct partnership with Yamaha Motor Europe - bringing more than 20 years of professional racing experience across MotoGP, WorldSBK and British Superbikes to the fore. The collaboration presents a dynamic racing team with highly-experienced engineering staff to extract the best of Yamaha’s proven racing pedigree and winning machinery.
From 2017, we became regular podium contenders – recording six podiums and showing incredible improvement throughout the season. This upward trajectory continued the following year when the team celebrated its first win with a spectacular double victory at Donington Park in May 2018. By the end of that season, our riders had scored three wins and 12 podiums.
In 2019, the Yamaha R1 took to the podium no less than 17 times including one emphatic win in Jerez, Spain. Then teammates Alex Lowes and Michael van der Mark finished the championship in close third and fourth respectively.
In 2020, exciting youngster Toprak Razgatlıoglu joined the squad and scored a win on debut at Phillip Island in Australia. He went onto finish fourth in the standings, one place ahead of van der Mark, with the team taking a total of 17 podiums, including four victories over the course of the season.
2021 went down as one of the greatest seasons on record, with Razgatlıoğlu battling Jonathan Rea for the championship. It went down to the final round, with Toprak taking the title, having won 13 races and 29 podiums. 2020 World Supersport Champion Andrea Locatelli also joined the team in 2021 and enjoyed a sensational rookie season, finishing fourth in the standings after scoring four podiums. It was a combined effort which resulted in Crescent winning the teams' title and Yamaha the manufacturers' championship, resulting in the "Triple Crown".
In the 2022 WorldSBK Championship season, all eyes were on Yamaha to defend its title. The Turkish rider became Yamaha’s most successful rider in WorldSBK, surpassing the previous record held by Noriyuki Haga, and 2022 saw him celebrate 14 victories to go “one better” than his title-winning year, despite one less event in the calendar than 2021. Razgatlıoğlu also won the overall Tissot Superpole Award for 2022, starting from pole on four occasions, winning seven Superpole Races and only starting outside the front row an incredible four times out of 36 races. He also achieved the largest “dry” pole margin in WorldSBK since 1992 – with a gap of 1.052s from the second-fastest time at the Mandalika International Street Circuit.
Razgatlıoğlu, Locatelli and Yamaha finished in clear second places in the Riders’, Manufacturers’ and Teams’ Championships. The team celebrated its best-ever event results in Indonesia last weekend with Razgatlıoğlu’s second “triple” hat-trick of victories plus Locatelli’s first WorldSBK front row-start, a superb podium in the Superpole Race and two fourth-places.
In his sophomore WorldSBK year, with increased competition across the category, Locatelli stepped on the podium on just two occasions in Mandalika and Assen, but finished the season strongly in the final rounds to secure a well-deserved fifth overall in the riders’ standings.
For Razgatlıoğlu and Locatelli, 2023 is their third season together, with numbers #54 and #55 alongside each other. Razgatlıoğlu starts his fourth year in blue with an enviable WorldSBK record of 82 podiums, 32 wins, 26 best race laps and eight pole positions from 156 race starts – but it’s his 2021 Riders’ Championship title that the Turkish ace wants most to emulate.