BMW S1000RR | Photo credits: World SBK
The first round of the World Superbike season was a mix of feelings for the newly created BMW Motorrad WorldSBK team. In Phillip Island, Tom Sykes was clearly the fastest rider of the team, but even that wasn’t enough for the S1000RR to be competitive and fight for top positions.000
According to Marc Bongers, director for BMW Motorrad Motorsport, “unfortunately our project started very late if we compare to Kawasaki and Ducati. It was only by mid-December that Tom and Markus were able to take the new bike to Almeria to test. Since then we’ve only had a couple of months and we have improved, but it’s clearly not enough”.
During the World Superbike round at Phillip Island, the new BMW S1000RR showed what it can do, with Tom Sykes qualifying fourth at the Superpole session. But on the three races, the best result was the seventh spot by Sykes himself, while Markus Reiterberger was lingering further behind his teammate.
The S1000RR, according to Tom Sykes, is already on a high level in terms of chassis setup, but the four-cylinder engine of the German superbike lack power to fight the higher top speed of their main rivals like Kawasaki and Ducati, who showed a 20 km/h advantage over the BMW bike.
Marc Bongers knows that the engine power is the main problem of the S1000RR, and with the round in Thailand fast approaching, in two weeks the World Superbike will have its second round of the 2019 season at Chang International circuit, the team is working hard to get the power level much higher than now, but we will probably need to wait until April to see the true potential of the S1000RR
“Thailand will be another specific track for us, very difficult. It won’t be easy for us, but we’ve got our team working hard in Monaco to improve the engine and as fast as possible. We hope to get the Superbike engine ready for the Aragon race, but for now, Tom and Markus will be using the engine in Superstock configuration”.
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