Althea BMW rider Jordi Torres ended Race 2 at Imola in P7 after collecting a season-best P4 the day before in Race 1 at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, with teammate Markus Reiterberger suffering a more difficult Race 2 in P12.

Under cloudy skies but on a dry track, Torres lost ground off the line and was tenth at the end of lap 1, before finding more pace and passing both Honda riders and his teammate Reiterberger, and gaining one more position before the flag to end the race in P7 for a good haul of points.

Reiterberger ran the early part of the race in P7 in a group of riders with similar lap times, before losing ground and crossing the line in P12.

“I thought I’d made a good start but still lost some places,” explained Torres. “We changed a few things for race 2, also using new brake pads. Unfortunately though, the bike seemed too loaded at the front and I wasn’t used to these brake pads, which behaved differently to the ones I'd used in the past and caused some vibrations which bothered me especially in the second half of the race. I was also forced to use the front tyre less, which meant that the rear was totally destroyed. All in all, it didn’t go badly and I made up some places but the important thing is that we have collected more information which will be useful for Malaysia, I thank my team for its hard work this weekend.”

“The first few laps were good and I was in seventh place, over the first six or seven laps I had good pace but not as fast as those ahead of me,” said Reiterberger. “Unfortunately I then started to suffer with a lot of vibration in the whole bike. The rear tyre was destroyed and it was all I could do to get to the end of the race. It’s a problem we’ve had before but not as bad as today so we must look at the data to understand how to resolve this.”

The next chance for the Althea pairing to score more points once again comes at Sepang International Circuit outside Kuala Lumpur, as WorldSBK heads back east for Round 6.