Markus Reiterberger (Althea BMW Racing Team) made a welcome return to riding on Friday as his home round got underway at Lausitzring, with the German ending the day in second place on the timesheets.

After a three month injury lay-off since suffering a compression fracture to his D12 vertebra during the second race at the Pirelli Riviera de Rimini Round in Misano, Reiterberger missed the recent test at the venue of his home race, but showed no signs of rustiness as he finished FP2 just 0.034s behind the fastest rider Lorenzo Savadori (IodaRacing Team).

The 2016 WorldSBK rookie enjoyed his return to action, especially on home soil, and reflected on the day’s activities saying, “Overall I’m very happy to be back in Superbikes after the long injury break and I feel good now. For sure the pressure is high with all the fans coming here, but I am enjoying my riding a lot. It was a good day today. First of all I tried to get the rhythm back on the bike and now I feel good. In the second practice we were quite fast so we can keep working like this. We have to be aware of the weather conditions because we don’t know what will happen. We just have to keep working hard.”

The BMW rider went on to add, “In the second practice we tried to work on the bike, the chassis and the electronics and we found a small step for the race pace which was quite good. At the end everyone takes a soft tyre and you can really push. I had a very good flying lap. But on the race tyres we still have some work to do.”