Six young Yamaha stars are about to embark on an exciting chapter in their racing career at the third edition of the Yamaha VR46 Master Camp. The selected students will be taken under the wings of Valentino Rossi, the VR46 Riders Academy and its riders, three-time English Flat Track Champion and two-time American and European Flat Track Champion Marco Belli, and many more racing experts from May 10th - 14th, 2017, to improve their racing skills.
As with the two previous editions, the new Master Camp riders will travel to Rossi's hometown of Tavullia in Italy. There they will receive instruction and guidance to further their racing careers during an extensive training programme (you can watch a summary video of the first Master Camp HERE and of the second edition HERE).
For the third edition, participants were chosen from among young Yamaha riders based in Asia, Oceania and North America, depending on their age, talent and championship standings. The new Yamaha VR46 Master Camp rider line-up includes Thailand‘s Peerapong Boonlert (18), Indonesia‘s Anggi Setiawan (18), Japan‘s Shota Ite (15), Malaysia‘s Muhammad Akid bin Aziz (18), Australia‘s Brandon Demmery (19) and Canada‘s Tomas Casas (17). The fourth edition, to be held later this year in July, will see European and South American riders attending the training programme.
The planned curriculum has full-time VR46 Riders Academy instructors teaching the Master Camp students various riding techniques as well as providing them with the necessary technical knowledge to make it on a World Championship racing level. The participants will put their skills to the test in various racing activities on YZ250Fs at Rossi‘s Motor Ranch, on YZF-R3s at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, and on mini-bikes at a go-karts circuit.
There will be lots of fun and laughter over the five days of training, but the hours will be filled with hard work. The stakes are high for the young riders as they hope to follow in the footsteps of second Master Camp edition participant Apiwat Wongthananon (Thailand, 23), who last year secured Yamaha‘s first-ever AP250 Championship Title and went on to kick start his international racing career as a member of the VR46 Master Camp Team in the Moto3 Junior World Championship class of the 2017 FIM CEV International Championship.