24/09/21
Circuito De Jerez

The BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team today completed the opening day of free practice at the Circuito De Jerez (SPA) with Michael van der Mark (NED) and Eugene Laverty (IRL).

Eugene Laverty who is standing in for the injured Tom Sykes (GBR) was first out of the pitlane in this morning’s FP1 session following almost a 3-month absence in the Championship. It took Eugene a full session to get up to speed with his BMW M1000RR as he finished in P20 in FP1 (1’42.288), however improving his lap time by over a second in FP2 (1’41.197) finishing in P14 overall for the day.

Teammate Michael van der Mark started his session off brightly this morning, setting a best lap time of (1’40.773), just +0.007 behind Locatelli in P6. In the afternoons session Michael couldn’t improve on his lap time from FP1 which meant he finished tenth overall on day 1.

“It was a pretty reasonable day from Michael. FP1 was kind of where we expected to be and in FP2, we tried the new Pirelli option tyres which we had to anyway. It was a shame they didn’t work out for him but that’s out of the way now and we have a good focus and direction to work in for FP3. 
Eugene did a solid job. He hasn’t rode a bike for three months and was thrown into the deep end and I’ll be honest with you he did okay. Again, he acclimatized himself with the BMW M 1000 RR and did himself justice so I think he will sleep well tonight. Him and his crew chief have some good ideas for tomorrow and I think he will bounce back and have a good go tomorrow. 

As always, a big focus on Superpole and the grid position for the races tomorrow, so hopefully good weather will greet us, and we will make a step forward.”

“This morning we were quite happy with the bike and tried something a lot different which felt okay. For the afternoon we tried to find some front end feeling which I struggled a little bit with this morning. The first outing was on a used front tyre which I felt comfortable with, and our lap time was quite fast. After that I had to try some different tyre options which Pirelli brought, so it was mainly speaking to them and giving good feedback. Unfortunately, I couldn’t improve on my lap time, but I think the feeling I had this morning and at the start of FP2 was not that bad, so I hope we can have really good pace tomorrow.”

“Today started out quite difficult after so long away, I think I was down in 20^th position. This afternoon we made some big strides forward despite my fastest lap being taken away from me following Bautista’s crash. That lap was the same as Mickey’s and that’s the goal, to be near him as he is the reference on the same bike. The bike’s working well. We just need a bit more feedback from the front tyre as I’m struggling to get a good sensation there. But it’s the second session on the bike, and I think we can be happy with our work.”