ROKIT BMW At the ROKiT BMW Motorrad team, WorldSBK rookie Miguel Oliveira’ s Round One was a bit of a disaster; a crash in quali put him at the back of the grid for all three races but looking beyond this, a keen eye would have seen that he worked tirelessly in the races to recover something from the mess he’ d created in qualifying. His race pace was clearly very good but starting from the back of the grid condemned him to mid-pack finishes. Sensibly, at Portimao, he didn’ t repeat his quali mistake and put himself on the second row of the grid instead. Whilst he wasn’ t quite able to keep in touch with the Aruba. it guys in the races, he rode confidently and skilfully to take out three third-place finishes in what was only his second race weekend on the M1000RR.
On the other side of the BMW garage, fellow ex-MotoGP refugee Danilo Petrucci isn’ t adapting quite as quickly as Oliveira but is making good progress, scoring top ten finishes in both full-length races and a slightly disappointing twelfth in the sprint race. Overall, BMW Motorrad would have been encouraged with its weekend given the concerns that they may have had at the start of the year that having two new riders in the team could’ ve impacted results. Oliveira will absolutely be one to watch as the season progresses especially if BMW can work on a couple of things that he has highlighted as deficiencies compared to the Ducatis- he feels they are less stable on corner entry and the rear is spinning up as the tyres wear.
78 KIWI RIDER