From a press release issued by Team Yamaha Belgarda:

YAMAHA RESIGNS JURGEN VAN DEN GOORBERGH FOR 2004
Yamaha is pleased to announce the resigning of Jurgen van den Goorbergh for the 2004 season. The Dutchman will continue to race for the Yamaha Belgarda Team in the Supersport World Championship.

The Monaco-based 33-year-old – originally from Breda in The Netherlands – joined the Italian distributor’s team on the eve of the 2003 campaign. He adapted quickly to the production-based Yamaha YZF-R6 after a career spent largely on two-stroke Grand Prix machinery and is currently second in the world championship after eight rounds of the 11 race series.

Commenting on the contract extension, Van den Goorbergh said: “Before the start of this season I wasn’t sure how things would go, after all, I had no experience of four-strokes and I would be working with an Italian team, which was also new to me.

“But I have been really surprised. We are fighting for the championship in my first season and off-track I really enjoy life in the Supersport paddock and working with the Belgarda team. They are such a professional bunch of guys and they have welcomed my brother Patrick, who is my mechanic, and me into the team. There was no reason for me to look elsewhere, the R6 will not be new to us next year and the development work we have carried out over the season, particularly to the fuel injection mapping, means that we should go into 2004 with a stronger package than our rivals and a big chance of winning the title.”

Belgarda Yamaha Team Manager Massimo Meregalli added: “Jurgen’s Grand Prix experience has been important to us this year. We have been on a steep learning curve this year. We started with two new riders, both of whom had no previous four-stroke experience, and a new bike in the 2003 YZF-R6, which featured fuel injection for the first time. On top of that we changed to Pirelli tyres and WP suspension. But Jurgen has a very analytical way of working and his ability to feel the smallest changes in bike set-up has given us a great deal of feedback and, together with the experience of our team staff, we were able to run up front from the beginning. We have built our team carefully over the last years to be one of the best in racing. Now Jurgen is second in the championship and you can be assured we will be trying our hardest to win the 2003 title in the remaining three rounds.”

Round nine of the Supersport World Championship takes place on the weekend of 5-7 September in Assen, the Netherlands.