08/11/22

• Penultimate event of the 2022 FIM Superbike World Championship this weekend in Mandalika, Indonesia.
• Season finale in Phillip Island, Australia, just one week later.
• Marc Bongers: “We are looking forward to the final push of the season at two special racetracks”.

 
Mandalika. The 2022 season in the FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) draws to a close with two back-to-back overseas events for BMW Motorrad Motorsport. This weekend (11th to 13th November), the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team and the Bonovo action BMW Racing Team line up with BMW factory riders Scott Redding (GBR), Michael van der Mark (NED), Loris Baz (FRA) and Eugene Laverty (IRL) in Mandalika, on the Indonesian holiday island of Lombok. They then head to Phillip Island in Australia the following weekend (18th to 20th November) for the season finale.
 
Mandalika International Street Circuit opened last year and this season hosts WorldSBK for the second time. When the series made its debut here in 2021, van der Mark finished third on his BMW M 1000 RR for the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team in the main race on the Sunday. The Bonovo action BMW Racing Team is set to make its first appearance in Mandalika this year, while the circuit is also new territory for riders Baz and Laverty.
 
Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit is a regular on the WorldSBK calendar. However, the coronavirus pandemic means the world championship last lined up there at the start of the 2020 season. It now returns to the track in southern Australia, which is extremely popular among all the riders and teams. For Laverty, the races in Phillip Island will be the last in his long career as a WorldSBK rider, before he switches to the management side of the Bonovo action BMW Racing Team from next season.

“We are looking forward to the final push of the season at two special racetracks. Mandalika’s debut last year was fantastic, with an incredible atmosphere. We also had a good event there from a sporting perspective. We are looking to back that up this year, and everyone is working hard to ensure that is the case. As we saw last year, the weather in Mandalika can play a major role. We must be ready for any conditions. After that, we head straight to the season finale in Phillip Island, and we are all looking forward to returning there. It will be the first time that we have raced there with the BMW M 1000 RR, as the pandemic meant Phillip Island did not feature on last year’s calendar. However, we know the circuit and our bike, so it shouldn’t take us long to find a good basic set-up. We want to end the 2022 season with some positive results, before we shift our focus entirely to next year.”

“Mandalika is a great place to race with the new circuit we had last year. I had some good results last year and I had a good feeling with the track and the fans. Obviously, the weather was quite crazy but we know this in Indonesia. I am looking forward to going back to Lombok. Wo we will see how it goes with the weather there, and the bike. Phillip Island is a track that I’ve really enjoyed a lot in the past, although we haven’t raced there for a couple of years now, so I have missed the place. It’s a circuit I haven’t been to with the BMW, so again we will see how it goes.”