News

The Althea BMW Racing Team has completed its first two days of testing ahead of the 2016 Motul FIM Superbike World Championship season.

New riders Jordi Torres and Markus Reiterberger were on-track on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Whereas Reiterberger has raced the BMW S1000RR in the IDM Superbike Championship of Germany and won the titles of both 2013 and 2015, the switch from Aprilia marks a new challenge for Torres.

“In general I’d say it’s gone well because we’ve completed some great work,” reports Torres, winner of the penultimate race of the 2015 WorldSBK season in Qatar. “We worked to find a solution for problems identified at the start of the test and the fact we found a solution, with a new bike, must mean we’re on the right track. We’ve a lot to do but we’ll soon be competitive and I want to do as much as I can to learn to ride what is a totally different bike to those I’ve ridden in the past.”

Although Reiterberger knows the bike extremely well, he still has the task of riding it to the WorldSBK technical regulations. Despite this, he was one and half seconds quicker on Tuesday than he had been on Monday and less than a tenth of a second slower than Kawasaki Racing Team rider Tom Sykes.

“I’m happy with how our first test has gone,” says the German. “I’ve got on really well with the whole team and with my BMW. I was very fast today but we have a great deal of work to do in order to improve in all areas and become competitive. I hope I’m able to improve already in the next test at Vallelunga, and can’t wait to get back on the bike.”

The Althea BMW riders will return to action on Monday 14 December, at the Vallelunga circuit on the outskirts of Italian capital city Rome.