As Day 1 at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto provided the first look of Toprak Razgatlioglu at the ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team alongside his rivals, all eyes were on the 2021 Champion to see how he would fare on the M 1000 RR. He was quick out of the blocks to post representative lap times in the 1’39s bracket to top the times during the early running, before ending the day in third place on what was a positive day for BMW in testing for the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship.

TWO BMWS IN THE TOP FOUR: a strong start for the factory BMW outfit as they ‘show potential’

Razgatlioglu and teammate van der Mark finished in P3 and P4 respectively at the end of the first day’s running, completing more than 70 laps each, with the #54 pipping van der Mark by just 0.010s. Razgatlioglu started his day with the SC0 tyre and was immediately in the 1’39s bracket, while a run on the SCQ tyre didn’t provide the expected benefits. Despite not improving by much on the Superpole tyre, the Turkish star was left feeling happy after a first test session in the dry after a disrupted programme in December last year.

Expanding on the opening day at Jerez, Razgatlioglu said: “I’m very happy to have good weather, finally! In my first tests, it was a little bit late, and we didn’t have a fully dry session. Now we have a fully dry track and, we showed our potential. This morning, in the first five laps, I did a 1’39.8s with the SC0 tyre. This is very good. I immediately saw 1’39s and thought it was good because people said BMW’s not ready to be a Championship bike, but if the bike didn’t have potential, we wouldn’t have done a 1’39s. It looks like the bike has potential. We need time and to improve the bike because I’m still learning it. I’m riding the bike for a full day; I’m learning a lot and so are the team. My style is probably a bit different, so my team are learning my style. In general, I’m happy. It’s been a positive test. Bulega did a good lap time with the SCQ tyre, but I don’t understand why the other riders didn’t do this. Maybe it's the same problem with grip.”

TIME TO FIND: “I hope we improve the bike and try the SCQ again to make a good lap time…”

The one-time Champion spent four seasons with Yamaha before switching to BMW for the 2024 season and, with more kilometres on the M 1000 RR secured, explained how the bike differs from the YZF-R1 he raced from 2020 to 2023. He also expressed his hope to gain more time on the SCQ tyre in Thursday’s running after not being able to find a huge amount of time on Wednesday, while also explaining that there’s a lot of new parts for him to test on Day 2.

Razgatlioglu added: “After riding for a different brand, the bike feels completely different. The electronics are different. I’ve almost adapted; not 100% but almost. Today, we tried some new parts and tomorrow there are many new parts. I hope we improve the bike; this is all I’m focused on. On the last run, I tried the SCQ tyre just to understand it because I’ve not tried it with this bike. I need to understand the balance because, always when you put the Q tyre on, the bike is always changing. The bike completely changed today. I was just one tenth faster than with the race tyre. Tomorrow, we also have the SCQ tyre. I hope we improve the bike and try it again to make a good lap time.”

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