Andrew Pitt - 2005 Rider Profile

Versatile Australian Andrew Pitt gets his first shot at the Superbike World Championship in 2005 after impressing his new Yamaha Motor Italia team in three supersport outings at the end of last season.

The 29-year-old from New South Wales, who is also a qualified accountant, has proved his ability on a variety of machinery: from winning the 2001 Supersport World Championship to competing full-time in MotoGP.

Pitt came to prominence in the Australian superbike and supersport championships in the late Nineties, winning the supersport title and coming second in superbike in 1999, before being snapped up by Kawasaki to race in the Supersport World Championship.

After spending 2000 learning the tracks and his new bike, Pitt took the title with a mightily consistent campaign in 2001. Andrew stayed with Kawasaki in 2002, just missing out on the supersport title but having the honour of scoring the Japanese manufacturer's first points in MotoGP when he took their new ZX-RR prototype to 12th at the end of season Valencia Grand Prix.

That led to a full MotoGP campaign with Kawasaki in 2003, before joining Moriwaki to help develop their V5 MotoGP machine last season. That was until the call came from Yamaha Motor Italia to join their team for the last rounds of the Supersport World Championship. Pitt's class was obvious straight away, putting the R6 on the podium first time out and giving two other fine performances to end the year 12th in the final standings - despite entering just three races.

Just as importantly, Pitt proved what a technically gifted rider he is in those end of season outings and convinced the team to offer him a contract to ride the R1 in the 2005 Superbike World Championship.

That faith appears justified as Andrew has already proved his worth to Yamaha's superbike programme in early testing, where his supreme fitness, consistency and ability to give the team good feedback has allowed him to rack up the miles on the R1 and help speed up development of the new bike.

With the R1 expected to develop throughout the season, a fast and intelligent rider like Andrew Pitt should be just the kind of rider to get the best from his new machine when the lights go green for Yamaha's return to the series.