New BMW Superbike makes progress

As recently announced, BMW will be entering the World Superbike Championship in 2009 with the all-new BMW S1000RR which has already been tested at various racetracks in Spain. It has now had its first test at a WSB venue of recent years, the Eurospeedway Lausitz, giving the team a chance to compare their progress against a known race pace.

At the end of the test, the team and the three test riders, Steve Martin (photo), Kevin Curtain and Jeremy McWilliams, were all happy with the progress of the bike and eager to work on analysing all the data before moving on to the next stage in the bike's development.

BMW Motorrad Motorsport's General Manager Berti Hauser, stated, "I am very happy with the professional way all three riders worked and the amount of feedback they have given us. We are under no illusions of the amount of work we have to do before the start of the season next year, but we are ready and looking forward to facing this huge challenge. Up to now, we have done very little work on the electronics and have preferred to get the bike's basics working well and I think we have achieved that."

Whilst the main focus of attention has been at the track, a lot of work has been going on near Rosenheim, a small town about sixty or so kilometres south east of BMW's headquarters in Munich. It is here that BMW Motorrad and their partners, Alpha Technik, will prepare the Superbike racebikes in a brand new state of the art facility, incorporating 7,000 square metres of workshops and offices.
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