A new team is set to join the World Superbike Championship grid for the 2010 season after recently-formed outfit Reitwagen Motorsport revealed plans to enter a privately-run BMW S 1000 RR.
The team, which would become the second BMW team on the grid alongside the factory outfit, will field a bike for Austrian racer Roland Resch, who finished the 2009 season without a point to his name following a challenging campaign with the TKR Switzerland Suzuki team.
"Roland will race the new BMW S 1000 RR next year with some know-how and assistance from BMW,” team spokesman Andreas Werth told the official
WSBK website, “but basically the team is developing the race bike from stock production bikes on its own.
“We have the budget for a full season and will start testing in Australia in late December. Reitwagen is the first BMW client in the Superbike World Championship and for us it's a great opportunity."
Resch himself said he was excited about the challenge of developing the BMW as a privateer team.
"The works bike is a piece of art, but I am almost more impressed by how close the stock bike is to good racing standards,” he said. “The stock bike already pulls 202hp with race exhaust and remapped electronics, so it's a very interesting base for race developments."