Eugene Laverty – in Aragon for the first time on his BMW M-1000RR – the unlucky person from the WorldSBK service had even travelled before for the Barcelona tests, but his team did not even make it. Now the Northern Irishman has to start the new season with just three days of testing, which is of course an absolute joke from a sporting point of view (© BMW Motorrad WorldSBK).

Jonas Folger before his comeback and Eugene Laverty before the restart

We still remember the MotoGP season very well, almost as if it were yesterday. Back then Tech 3 was still consistently successful and, as a Yamaha customer team with its riders Zarco and Folger, was sensationally strong right from the start. While the French competed for the podium from the start, the German made it to sixth place in the second race. He delivered the icing on the cake at his home race in Saxony and finished second behind Marc Marquez. Although he was unable to take part in a total of 5 races, Folger finished tenth in the 2017 World Championship. After his illness he lost his place in MotoGP and worked first as a test driver and then as a substitute driver in Moto2, with initially modest success. In 2020, he won a place in the WorldSBK as a BMW privateer as a Superbike champion in the IDM. Eugene Laverty, on the other hand, is the stand-up man of the WSBK, with countless setbacks, and he keeps coming back.

Jonas Folger (left) and Eugene Laverty at the BMW launch of the two new private teams for the blue and whites in November 2020. During the first test drives with the new BMW M-1000RR, things looked pretty good for the Bavarians, but in Aragon things didn’t quite keep up for all BMW drivers.

Will the late start of the tests become a boomerang for BMW and its riders?

The public and opponents were amazed that BMW took three of its drivers on the track in Jerez just before the official Barcelona Test. Sykes and van der Mark had not yet taken part in Jerez in autumn when almost all the others were testing at the Circuito de Jerez in the second half of November. Nevertheless, in April it still sounded confident and in Barcelona everything seemed to be going according to plan for at least Tom Sykes, Michael van der Mark and Jonas Folger. But shortly before the start of the season things suddenly looked less than ideal in Aragon. The times obviously left a lot to be desired and after the tests, Jonas said in the interview that he and his team would first have to check the data of the other BMW drivers. Maybe you will find something there that your team can optimize before the first weekend. The problem with this, however, is that Sykes and van der Mark also lagged astonishingly far behind the fastest. The Sykes setup is of no use to any other BMW driver due to his extreme driving style and the Dutchman was hardly better than the German in Aragon.

Tom Sykes 2019 photographed by us before the start in BuriRam – the Englishman needs an apparently strange setup for his extreme stop-and-go driving style, which had already caused astonishment at Kawasaki before. His first BMW team-mate, Markus Reiterberger, said about the setup of the man from Huddersfield that he would definitely fall with it, and that his suspension setting is simply impossible for any normal driver to drive. That is why van der Mark and Folger cannot really do much with their data in order to benefit sufficiently from them.

Is the other brake manufacturer a handicap for BMW?
Because Jonas Folger had praised BMW early on, he could hardly blame his bike after the disappointing times in Aragon. As an employee of the blue-whites, that doesn’t look particularly good anyway. So the assumption was eagerly placed in the media that the decision in favour of Nissin products could be a problem for BMW. After the tests, headlines appeared in the “Rainbow Press”. But of course this is absolute nonsense, also because in Jerez and Barcelona the clear statement was that they were completely satisfied and well-equipped. So it simply cannot be that the brakes suddenly become a handicap on the third stretch. The start-finish straight in Barcelona is not much shorter than the longest straight stretch in Motorland Aragon and all the routes driven are in the same country as Spain. So it’s no use trying to blame the brakes, which are still working perfectly in Jerez and Barcelona.

Jonas Folger (Bonovo Action) Back then he was still on a Yamaha at his first wildcard in the WorldSBK 2020 in Barcelona – due to problems with the electronics, the German had to start from very far back, but after that he managed to finish 12th and 11th in the races over the full distance.

Are excuses before the start of the season even useful?
Whether Folger or van der Mark, these two drivers suddenly sound like excuses before the drivers take to the track for the first test of strength. The man from Gouda frankly stated that he needed another one or two days of testing and that he had run out of time at the end of his tests. That’s why it wasn’t enough for him to hunt for a quick lap. Due to questionable delays on the part of his team, Eugene Laverty was only able to take to the track for the first time in Aragon, which means that the second BMW veteran, along with Tom Sykes, has to start the first weekend with absolutely suboptimal preparation. The fans of the blue and white would definitely have preferred to be optimistic about the first race and not have to hear the first excuses beforehand. We pointed out early on that the late gear on the racetracks could prove to be a mistake by BMW. Unfortunately, everything currently looks like we were absolutely right.

Michael van der Mark 2019 in Assen hotographed in Yamaha colours by us in the paddock posing with a young fan – we would have indeed wished him and the other BMW drivers a more professional and better preparation for the season. The drivers can’t help it any more than Lucas Mahias, for example, that he recently had his new Kawasaki ZX-10RR in his hands for the first time. The Frenchman will test briefly for the first time at Misano before he has to start the first race weekend only marginally prepared.

Does BMW, like KTM in MotoGP, stumble into the start of the new season?

To point out that there are, as in the example of Puccetti, Kawasaki with Mahias teams and drivers who are even less prepared than BMW would be the wrong approach. With all the effort that was put into the new M-1000RR model, the German brand wants to and must measure itself against the best in the industry. These are Kawasaki, Ducati, probably with Honda and Yamaha. While KTM can still try to excuse its failure at the beginning of the season with its loss of concession status, there is no pardon for the brand from Munich. They had already given up testing the S-1000RR in Aragon last year before the double race and now everything looks like they need a lot of luck in order not to disappoint at the start of the season. After that, there are two more racing weekends within three weeks and therefore hardly much time for optimizations and further developments. According to his statement, the goal for Folger is top ten placements. As the list of drivers present at tests in Aragon and their times shows, he will probably have to increase for this. It lacks the fast Honda’s and drivers like Mahias on the new Kawasaki ZX-10RR.

The overview of the Aragon tests until May 7th, excluding the HRC Honda times (as not disclosed):
1. Jonathan Rea (GB), Kawasaki, 1’48.528 (absolute lap record from 2020: 1’48.860 by J. Rea)
2. Scott Redding (GB), Ducati, 1’48.780
3. Alex Lowes (GB), Kawasaki, 1’49.182
4. Michael Ruben Rinaldi (I), Ducati, 1’49.205
5. Garrett Gerloff (GRT Yamaha), 1’49.439
6. Chaz Davies (GB), Ducati, 1’49.610 min
7. Toprak Razgatlioglu (TR), Yamaha, 1’49.763
8. Tom Sykes (GB), BMW, 1’4.,857
9. Andrea Locatelli (I), Yamaha, 1’50.257
10. Eugene Laverty (IRL), BMW, 1’50.604
11. Michael van der Mark (NL), BMW, 1’50.781
12. Jonas Folger (D), BMW, 1’50.815
13. Axel Bassani (I), Ducati, 1’51.146
14. Kohta Nozane (JAP), Yamaha, 1’51.277
15. Isaac Vinales (E), Kawasaki, 1’51.724
16. Chris Ponsson (Alstare Yamaha), 1’52.269

Tom Sykes Photographed by us in his first BMW year at the autograph session – the joker from Huddersfield is considered Mister Superpole, and maybe he will manage a great chaos lap in qualifying. The question for him and his fellow brands is whether they will also be good for top places in the race.

>Aragon preview: see separate report on this page.

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© WorldSBK).