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Now in its fourth year of competition in the FIM Superbike World Championship the official BMW Motorrad Motorsport team demonstrated that it is still improving by taking its best individual race finish of second at Phillip Island last weekend.

Marco Melandri had not enjoyed some of his experiences during the winter test period and set-up issues in qualifying held him down in 13th place on the grid. But come the start of the year he and his crew found the key to let Marco overcome all but one of the riders in race one.

This second place was a historic one for BMW as it was the best ever result for the S1000RR - all previous five podium finishes having been third places. Not a bad start for the partnership of Melandri and BMW and one that places Melandri second in the riders' rankings with 30 points. Thanks to the efforts of the injured Leon Haslam on the other top BMW, the official squad collected 45 points in total, the most ever from the German marque in this class.

Melandri had many reasons to be satisfied with the way his first BMW raceday worked out. "Giving BMW its best ever result in only my first race on the RR is awesome. I still cannot believe that. The guys at the circuit and in the factory are working really hard, and they have done a great job. We didn't quite know how we would perform in the race as we hadn't done any long runs in pre-season testing. During the race I just tried to keep my rhythm and tried not to override as I knew I would have to look after the tyres. I had to wait for the right moment to pass Tom Sykes and Sylvain Guintoli. In the final two laps Sylvain was pushing very hard again, but I kept focused on my race and defended my position. Race two was very difficult. It was warmer, so I had to push harder to catch the guys in front of me, and it was not easy. But we finished the first weekend second in the championship, and that is better than expected."

Bernhard Gobmeier, BMW Motorrad Motorsport Director, was justifiably proud of all his staff while keeping his feet on the ground that there is still a lot of work to do. "Overall the weekend was very positive - Marco's second place means the best result for BMW Motorrad in World Superbike so far. The weekend was a bit of a roller coaster, but in the end we proved that our work over the winter paid off. Still, we are not where we want to be, and we have some areas to work on, and this is what we will do over the next couple of weeks. Considering the grip issues Marco faced in race two, which unexpectedly showed up from the beginning of the race, his performance cannot be valued high enough. He did an outstanding job, demonstrated his qualities, and is now lying second in the World Championship."

The BMW squad will travel to Spain for a test later this month in readiness for the next championship round at Imola on April 1.