End of a difficult weekend for Reiterberger in Thailand
The Pirelli Thai Round, the second race weekend of the MOTUL FIM WorldSBK championship is over now after a difficult and, due to the relentless heat at the Chang International Circuit in Buriram, exhausting weekend for Markus Reiterberger and the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK team.
For the Warm up at the morning of the 17thof March, the crew around “Reiti” had done some changes to the fork of the BMW S 1000 RR, with which the 25-years-old came along quite well. The German had a super start into the 10-lap-long Superpole Race from 12thposition and was able to stay close with his teammate Tom Sykes. Already during the first lap “Reiti” caught up to 10th. After a few position changes with the - regarding the top-speed obviously predominant - Ducati V4 R machines, he had to deal with a hard clash with the Kawasaki ZX-10RR of Leandro Mercado (Orelac Racing Verdnatura) and Reiterberger had to go wide into the run-off area to avoid to crash. He lost six positions after this incident and tried to catch up again to the group, but only was able to finish the race in 14thplace.
The problems with the lack of feeling for the BMW S 1000 RR while cornering continued also during the last race of the weekend on Thai turf. Some small adjustments done on the BMW-Superbike during the morning brought some improvements and could reduce the gap to the group, but were not enough for the duration of the race. Reiterberger only missed out of the Top Ten with an eleventh place in race two. His teammate Tom Sykes suffered of a technical problem with his BMW S 1000 RR and had to retire from the race earlier on.
Markus Reiterberger #28; P14 + P11: “After the Warm up this morning we made some minor changes to the fork and damper, what got me a better feeling with the bike and I was able to ride more constantly. I had a really good start into the Superpole race, was able to stay with Tom (Sykes) and had the pace for 10thor 11thposition. But the top-speed of the Ducatis really is brutal and they passed us. Then suddenly (Leandro) Mercado hit me. I was just able to save it while going wide into the run-off area, but I lost some positions due to it and I was not able to gain them back again. During the third race I had to deal with the same problems like yesterday while coming around the corners. I almost lost the front a couple of times and I had no feeling for the bike whatsoever. We really need to try to find a solution for that.”
Comentarios