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A fifth and a ninth for Leon Haslam at the Nürburgring were not the best results that the official BMW Motorrad Motorsport team could have gone looking for at a home race, but they could not hide the fact that the official team was back to strong form after the summer break.

Haslam had a remarkable race one, running up to fifth then running out of road and having to take to the escape areas, before eventually rejoining. Down in 14th at that point, he wicked it up to a pace that only leader Carlos Checa could match at some stages. He passed many of his competitors and he made it back the very same fifth place he had lost out on when he had run wide.

Another dramatic contest in race two saw Haslam fall in the atrociously wet conditions but restart and get back into ninth place. BMW's official team now has a real reason for optimism in the remaining three rounds, given Haslam's pace in race one.

Said the English rider afterwards, "In race one I had a good start and managed to pass two guys. Then I tried to bridge the gap to Eugene Laverty. I just pushed a little bit too hard, got a false neutral and ran off the track. To be fair, I thought the race was over. But I got my head down and managed to get back to fifth. I am happy to have managed that, but disappointed I ran off. But the battling was certainly fun. In the second race I felt really good. The crash was my fault. I clipped a white line, which in these conditions is not good, and I went down. I managed to get going again and climb all the way up to seventh, but the race was stopped before I crossed the line, the results were taken from the lap before, and so I was ninth. The conditions out there were really bad, and it probably should have been stopped earlier. I think I could have got on the podium today because my times at the end were really good, but it was definitely the right decision to stop the race."