Toprak ‘sad’ as BMW blows
There was public relations humiliation for BMW as superstar Toprak Razgatlioglu’s engine exploded in front of the Phillip Island crowd and a live global television audience during Race 2 in Australia on Sunday. Although the Turk grabbed a Sprint Race podium on his first weekend for BMW, he knows there’s plenty of work to do in the quest to make the M1000RR a regular race winner.
The results at Phillip Island backed up precisely why Shaun Muir, Team Principal of the Rokit BMW team, told MCN pre-season that wins and podiums are a more realistic target than the championship this year.
Australia has a habit of throwing up strange results but, as the relatively lacklustre results of Michael van der Mark, Scott Redding and Garrett Gerloff with the other three BMWs were proof that the two-day test in Barcelona before the next races in March will be worth its weight in gold.
“I’m sad,” said 2021 World Champion Razgatlioglu, having departed Yamaha following a four-year stint in blue. “I really wanted a podium in my first BMW race. I got one in my second, so I’m 50/50 about the weekend. We have improved the bike but it wasn’t great to be watching Race 2 on TV.
“We need to come back really strong. We’ve collected race data, which is very different to testing. Catalunya will be a hard circuit for us because of the long corners but, step-by-step, we can get there. We need a setup for the long races.”
In Race 1, Razgatlioglu was dropped from fourth to fifth due to a time penalty for leaving the pits too soon; making matters worse. Redding also received a penalty.
‘It wasn’t great to be watching Race 2 on TV’