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Gabor Rizmayer makes his full-time debut in WorldSBK this year, having ridden in several events last season as a substitute rider.

Team-mate to Imre Toth at BMW Team Toth, the Budapest-born rider suffered an unfortunate start to proceedings as he was ruled out of the Australian season-opener after breaking a wrist in Friday practice. Nonetheless, he is not expecting spectacular results early on in the 13-round campaign.

“Fortunately, we are here,” Rizmayer begins. “Unfortunately, we didn’t plan it! Just two weeks before the first race, I got the opportunity to jump on the bike. I hope when we get to Europe we are able to start moving forward.

“The bike is quite new – we got it just a few days before shipping it to (Australia) – so we don’t know what we can accept right now. I think after a few races we can start to think more about what we can do.”

The 33-year-old went on to insist that he will be expecting more significant improvements when the World Championship’s European season begins, starting with back-to-back events in Aragon and Assen in mid-April:

“Obviously, it has to be closer, but BMW has a completely new bike. It makes it a bit difficult because we don’t know the bike as well as last year’s bike, so I think we can be closer at the end of the season but not at the first races.”

With Rizmayer relegated to the sidelines at Phillip Island, team-mate Imre Toth qualified 21st on the grid before racing to respective 20th and 17th place finishes.