The FIM World Superbike Championship (WorldSBK) rounds at the Portimão Circuit in Portugal on March 27th-29th were solid for the ROKiT BMW Motorrad team. Portuguese factory rider Miguel Oliveira scored a pair of podium finishes on his #88 BMW M 1000 RR.
The Portugal race weekend was only the second for Oliveira (shown in top photo) in the WorldSBK series after several years in MotoGP. The rider secured fourth position to start the first race in the Superpole qualifying session and followed that up with a third-place podium finish in race one. He followed that up with another third-place finish in the Superpole race on Sunday morning and repeated the result in race two on Sunday (3/29). Aruba.it Racing rider Nicolo Bulega won all three races on his Ducati Panigale V4R. His teammate Iker Lecuona finished second in all three races.
Oliveira’s teammate Danilo Petrucci is new to the BMW team and finished 10th, 12th and seventh in the three races at Portimão, with the team encouraged by his improvement from Saturday to Sunday. The podium finishes put Oliveira into third place in the championship points behind Bulega and Lecuona. Petrucci is in eighth place, and BMW is third in the manufacturer points behind Ducati and Bimota. “I’m happy to be on the podium in front of my home crowd. It was special for sure to get all the crowds cheering my name and supporting BMW,” said Oliveira. “That was a really, really cool moment. We know that we have work ahead of us but we are motivated to work and this is a small reward for the team to show that we are heading in a good direction, that the package is working with me and we should just focus on taking out the maximum we can from ourselves, from my riding and from this bike.”
Danilo Petrucci improved over the course of the weekend in Portugal.
The next WorldSBK race weekend will take place on April 17th-19th at the Assen circuit in the Netherlands.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy BMW]
