CHALLENGING DAY FOR BUILDBASE BMW AT DONINGTON PARK
It was a challenging day for the Buildbase BMW Motorrad team in the opening round of the 2015 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship.
After dominating the weekend and storming to pole position on Sunday, Ryuichi Kiyonari was unable to transform his pace into results. The Japanese rider struggled with a lack of feeling in the first race. These issues were resolved ahead of race two and he was able to run at the front, but pushing too hard too early meant he crashed out of a four-way battle for the lead on lap six.
Lee Jackson enjoyed two solid points-scoring finishes in his first race with the team as a full-time superbike rider. Two crashes on Saturday saw the Lincolnshire youngster qualify further down the field than he’d have liked but he fought through in both races to take 13th place.
Lee Jackson: 13th & 13th: "I’m really happy with today’s results, after two crashes yesterday it’s really important to walk away with two solid finishes. As much as I’d have liked to be in the top ten I know what I’ve got to do and we made a lot of progress today so I’m pleased with that. I need to be able to get a good qualifying spot moving forwards so I can challenge further up in the races, but it’s not been a bad start. I’m looking forward to brands but it’ll be quite difficult with so many riders on such a small circuit!"
Ryuichi Kiyonari, 14th & DNF: “Until this morning, this weekend had been almost perfect. We haven’t been fastest in every session but we were there most of the time. This morning the temperature was quite high, not very hot but it was much warmer than yesterday and feeling of the machine completely changed. It wasn’t a problem with the bike I just had no feeling. We made a small change for the second race and the feeling was better. I needed to pass the three in front but it was just too much too fast. Maybe because race one wasn’t very good I was too tense and hurried too much. The most important thing is we fixed the issue and because of that I’m feeling confident for Brands, I will try to win.”
Steve Hicken, Team Manager: "It’s been a strange day. To dominate free practice and qualifying like we did to end up with the day that we had, jeez. It wasn’t what we expected! We’ll just have to dig deep and come back at Brands. We’ll have to start chipping away at points straight away as we need to get into that top six. We’re not lacking pace, we’ve got plenty of that. We’ll have to have a look at the reasons why race one and race two happened and take stock of it and come back stronger."The Buildbase BMW Motorrad team will be back in action in two weeks’ time at Brands Hatch.
