11/06/21 
Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli 

Following a year’s absence from the Rimini circuit in 2020, the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team pairing of Tom Sykes and Michael van der Mark finally returned to track onboard their BMW M 1000 RR’s, and were greeted by fans for the first time in 2021.

Tom Sykes, who is looking to relive the team’s podium success in 2019, entered FP1 sporting his beach inspired helmet, however struggled for pace during the session as he finished in P14 (1’36.231). The team made some adjustments to Tom’s BMW M 1000 RR in-between FP1 and FP2 which instantly made a difference to the lap times. In the early stages, Sykes was running within the top 5 places although slipped down the order in the closing minutes, finishing in P8 on combined times (1’35.232).

It was the first outing on the BMW M 1000 RR for Michael van der Mark at the Misano World Circuit, and he was keen to get the early laps under his belt. Michael managed to get a solid 19 laps during FP1 whilst finishing the session in P10 (1’35.831). In the afternoons final session of the day, Michael could not match his pace set in FP1 and as a result finished the day in P14 on combined times.

“FP1 was in much cooler conditions and both guys settled in reasonably quick. Tom made some good steps forward, but Michael didn’t get that transfer in feeling from Estoril to here, so he has had an awful lot of work to do today.  

Tom made some good chassis changes and tried the new SCX and SC0 tyre, which we are still unsure which route to go down with and is a borderline decision for Tom. We will keep working tonight and hopefully should be in a good position come tomorrow. Michael has found it difficult in FP2 again with the higher temperature and could not get a comfortable feeling with the chassis, so we have a lot of work to do overnight, and the guys will work hard to give him a setting that will give him some confidence and rhythm going into FP3.

“I don’t think we have got the best from our race set up today for the simple reason we did a lot of trial and error, however gained a lot of information for the BMW M 1000 RR. Overall, I am surprised to be where we are considering what we have been doing, so for me I am feeling fairly relaxed about that. Tomorrow is another day; we will have good sit down and assess the changes we made today and hopefully make a good step forward for FP3 in the morning.”

“It’s not exactly where we want to be. This morning’s FP1 session felt okay, I was feeling good on the bike and the lap times were relatively okay which I was happy about. Then this afternoon we tried to change some settings on the bike, but we struggled a lot with stopping the bike and initial turning, which is quite hard to struggle in areas at this track as you need to stop and you need a lot of turning on the bike. Anyway, It was nice to be back riding here in Misano and as soon as we can get the bike to turn how we want, it will be fun again.”