Unitech Promising Big Things in 2023

South Australian Superbikes team Unitech Racing is promising to make an even bigger noise in the Australian Superbike Championship in 2023.

The boutique team, formed in 2016 by MTA members Peter and Donna Hoeymakers, helped steer Adelaide Yamaha rider Arthur Sissis to a sixthplaced finish in the 2022 season, 14 points clear of his nearest factory rival. Now, they’re daring to dream of the ultimate success.

“I hope Arthur’s on the podium at every race meeting. I do believe we can achieve that,” Donna said.

The season culminated with the 27-year-old achieving his first podium finish in the final meet at Tailem Bend.

“It just lifted all of us - it was just fantastic and it was fantastic for him. I think he’s had his doubts over the time.”

Big things too are tipped for junior riders Samuel Pezzetta, 17, and Cameron Rende, 16, who will feature in the Supersport 300 series.

“I think for Samuel we can achieve first or second at every race and hopefully he wins the championship.

“And for young Cameron I think we’ll see him progress, at the moment he’s probably midfield. I think he’ll be up the front end of the field by the end of the year.”

Unitech has slowly but steadily been winning admirers from its peers and rivals for its ability to punch significantly above its weight in a sport where winners traditionally are determined by the weight of sponsorship dollars and the merits of the manufacturer’s bike.

“When we first came along to the paddock (the pit area) not many people would look at you or talk to you,” Donna said.

“But I guess now they see that we’re still there and at the last race meeting we heard the commentators say ‘Unitech racing team is bubbling away in the background. They’re on a limited budget and all their riders are in the top of their field’.

“I think we’ve earned a lot of respect because they know our resources are limited and we are beating factory teams.”

They’ve done it, starting from scratch, scrounging together every sponsorship dollar they can, with a team full largely of volunteers who help keep two dreams alivehusband Peter’s to work in the sport and Sissis’ to keep riding in it.

“He’s the most naturally talented, gifted rider many people have seen but unfortunately, little old South Australian, here in Virginia, hard to get sponsorship within our state, it was very hard to keep him there.”

Sissis’ father approached Peter when the money ran out to keep his Moto Grand Prix career afloat.

The Hoeymakers already owned Hoey Racing, a well-established motorcycle suspension business in Pooraka. But it was about to chart a whole new course.

“Peter and I had always had the dream for him that he could be involved with Superbikes.

“Once Sissis’ father realised that Pete and I were in it for the long haul and dedicated to the cause, things changed from there.

“Our philosophy is we saw a need here within this state because of Arthur’s story that young talented riders cannot make it overseas because there are too many limitations.”

The first and ever constant challenge remains money, and it prompted Donna to enrol in a sponsorship course, netting the team $25,000 in its first year.

“We’ve relied on lots of people giving bits and pieces of sponsorship. We still need a few more just to relieve that load a little bit from some of the others but it is difficult,” Donna said.

The Hoeymakers’ maiden foray into the world of professional motorsport was anything but glamorous. The MTA members now compete against the best of the best.

“We did it very economically, people camping in swags, we didn’t book accomodation. Just had to trailer it across as best we could to the other states and did it on a really, really tight budget.”

Theirs is a team where virtually no-one is paid.

“Most everyone on our team are volunteers, we’ve probably got about 25 personnel in total.”

Data technician Scott Heyes from Edge Competition in Brisbane has been flown in from Queensland for the last two years.

“He just charges us half rate and that’s his sponsorship to the team. “We do, out of our sponsorship, pay for a couple of mechanics to come from Queensland which is a bit sad because we’d rather be a South Australian team as such but we had to have dedicated people that would be there and committed to every round.”

The sport’s lack of media exposure remains a constant frustration to Donna and works against her desire to secure more financial support and local people on the ground to work with the team.

“That’s my biggest grump,” she said. “If it’s not football or a couple of other sports, you don’t hear much about it whatsoever.

“Young Samuel Pezzetta who rides for us, some of his family came along for the first time and they were blown away. They’d never seen the sport, they’d never seen how exciting and thrilling it is.

“These people were saying ‘how come we’ve never seen this before?’

“That really resonated with me. It’s like, the general public don’t know about it, they don’t see how exciting and thrilling it is.”

While the sport works hard to promote itself, it doesn’t seem to cut outside its own supporter base, attracting new fans and sponsors. But switch up from two wheels to four and it’s a different story.

“I don’t know why Supercars should have the peak of it all because it’s the same thing to us.

“As someone said to us, ‘you guys are participating in the equivalent of the V8 Supercars with the bikes but we don’t get the publicity and we don’t get the sponsorship from the bigger companies and I don’t know why that is.”

Unitech’s biggest need right now is a truck to help ease the pressure of travelling around the country.

“That will save Pete a lot of time and energy because every time we’ve got to go to a race meeting, we’re taking six bikes so that means three vehicles, three trailers, loading, unloading, toolboxes, tubs of equipment so that’s a lot of physical work. If we had a truck, we could leave a lot of things in the truck.

“We’ve been trying to say to Yamaha ‘you need to do a little bit more to help us’.”

Donna would also love to see more new blood keen to join pit crews.

“There’s not enough people learning how to do the data, how to be technicians how to be mechanics.

“It’s very intense on race day. We’re chasing like not even a tenth of a second, less than that which is massive in the scheme of things. Every little thing you do in the pits is about getting that little extra fraction of a second.

“To teach young people that is a good thing.

“A lot of people on our team are older people. As some of us are getting older, we see the value of having young people on the team too, so it is very important that we train people up.”

But even if that influx of young mechanics materialises, Unitech is content with its place in the Superbikes landscape and has no plans to expand, even if it means losing riders to bigger teams.

“We don’t have the personnel to maintain another bike at race meetings, that would take a whole new level of management.”

The trick now is to somehow make it more sustainable.

“We all love doing this but it does cost our businesses when we’re away.

“I think the buzz about our team within our state is really good and there have been a lot more young riders joining the national circuit because of our team and what they learn from us.

“As a result of that, a lot of people within our state then come in and bring business to us also.

“We just have to find the magic ingredient where we can make money off the race team.”