13.10.19
Circuito San Juan Villicum
The final day of racing here at the Circuito San Juan Villicum approached us, and with temperatures considerably down compared to yesterday this meant for much safer racing conditions. Tom Sykes got off to a solid start gaining 5 places on the opening laps putting himself into P8. Leon Haslam passed Sykes the following lap relegating him into ninth position. Tom would ride a lonely race from then on out to take P9. Markus Reiterberger having struggled all weekend didn’t manage to make the dream start and held P17 on lap 1. Markus got himself into a battle with the number #23 of Kiyonari throughout the race however the German would eventually come out on top – final position P17.
The final race of the weekend was upon us and the BMW pair took to their new starting positions, Sykes now P9 and Markus retaking P17. Sykes again got his BMW S 1000 RR off the line well and looked to be battling with the top 6 until a small mistake ran him wide dropping him down into P11. The bad luck didn’t stop there as on lap 6 Tom Sykes’s bike had a technical problem at T10 forcing him to retire from the race. Markus Reiterberger’s final race of the weekend ended in P16.
The BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team will now turn their attention to a fortnights time where they will participate in the final race weekend of the 2019 WSBK Championship in Qatar. (24/26 October)
Shaun Muir - Team Principal
“Today was probably one of our most difficult days of the season. On paper, the Superpole Race was not so bad for Tom as at least he managed to get on the third row for the start of the main race. But with this new model of bike we don’t have any data to work with, so everything is new for us, with every setting we try, we are chasing the perfect set-up. All we can do is take all this data with us and when we come back here again, we will have a better position to start with. So it’s been really difficult for us, but we must take the positives and build on this.
Markus has also really struggled and didn’t find a comfortable setting, but we just have to close the book on this event and re-energise as we get ready for Qatar, where hopefully we can start on the front foot.”
Marc Bongers - BMW Motorrad Motorsport Director
“It was a difficult end to a disappointing weekend. Unfortunately, we retired from the main race as a result of a technical issue with the clutch. However, we have to be realistic and say that we were never going to get a good result. We just didn’t understand why we were so far behind and what we needed to do to remedy this issue. We didn’t have consistent track conditions to enable us to find a solution. The track was catastrophic on the first day, okay yesterday morning, then extremely hot in the afternoon, and this morning it was back to being acceptable – these conditions meant that the lap times varied drastically. As a result, we were unable to gradually draw the necessary conclusions as to which direction we needed to take. We will now take the data we collected back with us, and will analyse why we weren’t as competitive as we had hoped this weekend.”
Tom Sykes (GBR)
“It’s been a difficult weekend. We made some improvements on the greasy track condition and I honestly felt we had a consistent race pace during that last race, but we ran into difficulty with the bike which meant we had to retire. Overall, it’s been a challenging weekend for the whole BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team, but like I said it wasn’t the easiest of track conditions; however, given the circumstances I feel we gathered some very valuable information for the future. We will put this weekend behind us and move on to the next race in Qatar, where hopefully we can take another step forward.”
Markus Reiterberger (GER)
“We had much better weather conditions today. It was cooler, which meant that the racing line on the track was in a much better state. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes on the first two laps of the Superpole Race and went too wide. As a result, the race didn’t go well for me, and I crossed the finish line pretty far down the field. We made a few changes for the second race, and I felt relatively okay on the bike in the race itself. Points would have been achievable, and I battled with Sandro Cortese on the final three laps, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to get the point. Generally, we are still a little bit too slow and we need to find the reason why. I hope that I will end the season on a personal high in Qatar. We all pulled together here, and I’m grateful for that, even if we weren’t rewarded with a good result.”
