11/09/22

• Scott Redding finishes second in race one at Magny-Cours to claim his best result so far on the BMW M 1000 RR.

Magny-Cours. Donington Park (GBR), Most (CZE) and now Magny-Cours (FRA): Scott Redding (GBR) kicked off the second half of the 2022 FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) with another podium. Starting from the front row, the Brit from the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team finished runner-up in Saturday’s opening race. In doing so, he also claimed his best race result so far on the BMW M 1000 RR. Magny-Cours hosted the seventh of twelve race events that make up the 2022 season.

In Saturday morning’s Superpole, Redding finished third to secure a spot on the front row of the grid for the first time this season. He immediately climbed into second place at the start of the opening race, before taking the lead shortly after. As the race progressed, only Alvaro Bautista (ESP / Ducati) was able to find a way past him, and Redding celebrated second place on the podium together with his team. In the Superpole race on Sunday morning, Redding came home fifth. He then ended the weekend with a sixth place in the second main race on Sunday afternoon.

Michael van der Mark (NED) from BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team made his comeback at Magny-Cours after a lengthy injury-enforced break. Starting 15th, he came home twelfth in race one and 13th in the Superpole race. Van der Mark then crashed out of race two on Sunday afternoon, but is okay.

Round eight of the WorldSBK season will take place in two weeks (23rd to 25th September) at Barcelona (ESP).

“I am pretty happy. To take the podium here and the first front row are the positives we take and the negatives are not that bad. We just struggled a little bit in acceleration areas in this track and that was costing me too much time. I think without that lack of acceleration I would have probably been fourth in race two but that was our only real weak point so when we look at the other parts, it was good. We just need to understand why I was losing so much out of the slow corners. I can walk away happy and we just need to look to the next race and keep trying to improve to the end of the year. We are learning. It is another track, it is another small problem we need to address. We have just to keep improving bit by bit. It is not going to be straight forward, it is going to be a little bit up and down, but as long as we keep getting there, it is good. For me it’s nice that BMW can get something back because they are putting in hard work. We’ve still got a long way to go but we are able to be there sometimes and the plan before the season was to get there, if we can get a podium, let’s do it, if not to understand the data so we can improve. And we are taking that. We have taken the way we wanted to go now so we have to be a bit more competitive to the end of the season and I think we are on the right track.”