Superpole under difficult conditions; lonely race for Reiterberger
It has been a crazy second day at the „Circuito San Juan Villicum“ in Argentina today for Markus Reiterberger and the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team. After the bad conditions of the track on day one, the riders of the WorldSBK-field had gathered together yesterday and requested from the organizers that the conditions of the track would have to change tremendously, as the riding on a dirty track as it was yesterday really is dangerous. The track got extensively cleaned over night and that the conditions had improved was clearly visible from the times during the third free practice this morning.
The temperatures widely increased at the venue of the penultimate round of the FIM MOTUL Superbike world championship in San Juan before the start of the Superpole session today. It was impossible to improve the times during the qualifying under these conditions. Some of the riders decided to withdraw from the race under these conditions and did not appear on the grid. Reiti had a quite good start into the race one from 17th on the grid and was able to make up some positions. But he lost these positions due to leaving the ideal line shortly. At the end of the race the 25-years-old was able to cross the line in eleventh position and collected some crucial championship points. The conditions of the track are expected to change again for the second race tomorrow as the temperatures are anticipated to vitally drop. We will see how this might affect the second race on Latin-American sole.
Markus Reiterberger, #28 - P11: „It has been a difficult day today. The riders already have decided yesterday that they won’t ride if the conditions were the same today like yesterday, as it really is too dangerous. The ideal line only measures one meter and if you leave it then you risk to crash. They have cleaned the track overnight. You may did not notice this, but the grip got way better and we were already faster for the third free practice this morning. But the temperatures have risen before the Superpole session. Everyone used the soft tyre then and it was worse than ever before. It was the same for each of us riders. Nobody was able to improve the times on the qualifying tyre and the conditions were really dangerous. We had another rider-meeting and actually 75% of them decided not to ride as it was too risky. My team decided that we will start the race. I had a quite good start and was able to overtake two riders. Unfortunately I left the ideal line briefly and lost these positions again. At the end I finished in eleventh position and got the bike across the finish line without an incident. The points are good for the championship, but we are too far off in general. We will see how the day goes tomorrow.“