Productive first day at the European opening round
The first day of the European opening event of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship at the MotorLand Aragón in Spain was a productive one for Markus Reiterberger and the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team. The Bavarian factory brought some new parts to Spain and Reiti and his team had proper work to do on the practice-Friday. The experiences with the new parts for the BMW S 1000 RR were positive and a lot of new knowledge was collected during the day, which now only has to be implemented.
After a more tough first free practice on Friday morning and a 12thposition, Reiterberger finished the first practice day in eighth at the second free practice, with a 1’50.799 lap time and just over a second behind the leading rider Alvaro Bautista (ARUBA.IT Racing - Ducati). For the afternoon-session some modifications, that worked quite well, were done to the bike and will be refined tomorrow morning during the third free practice.
Markus Reiterberger #28, P8: “I am happy with today in general. We were able to improve some more steps and gained more knowledge. I didn’t have the right feeling with the bike during the first session this morning. I went too wide too often and also had a lack of grip. The second free practice went much better. We could change a few things and will try to carry the positive results with us and refine them for tomorrow. I am not happy yet with the deceleration, but if we can fix that, I can be really fast. My team did a fantastic job once again today and I am looking forward to tomorrow.”