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BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE · OFFICIAL PROGRAMME
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EXCITING CONTENT
The WorldSBK grid has always had a strong presence of UK based teams , from the very beginning in terms of privateers and official teams . Nowadays it ’ s Paul Denning ’ s Crescent Racing squad and Shaun Muir ’ s eponymous SMR Racing team that lead from the front in a UK sense . They form one half of the factory efforts for Yamaha and BMW , respectively .
The simple fact for any British WorldSBK team is that it has always been a bit more difficult for them to do this kind of thing compared to their ‘ continental ’ cousins . For the even simpler reason that Britain is an Island . Every journey there and back is longer than it is for a team based on the same continent as the vast bulk of the race circuits . Add in two years of the unpredictable pandemic - travel restrictions , health checks , countryby-country rules and conventions - and now a changed trade and political relationship between the UK and EU in general , and it is an inescapably even more complicated business for a UK-based race team to do a full WorldSBK season than it has been before .
This makes the fact that the Pata Yamaha with Brixx Racing team - the overall name of the combination of Crescent Racing , the Italian based Yamaha operation near Monza and the home factory in Japan - combined harmoniously to win the World Championship in 2021 all the more remarkable .
So what has been , and is , the biggest challenge for the UK side of the Yamaha WorldSBK squad for the past couple of years ? Especially right now , as they head back home for the Donington Round ? “ Honestly , COVID
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