Lack of grip halts BMW progress at Silverstone

Troy Corser drops to tenth in the World Superbike standings after suffering his first DNF of the season at Silverstone.

03 Aug 2010

Corser, British WSBK 2010
© Gold and Goose

BMW's hopes of picking up where they left off from Brno hit a snag at Silverstone after both Troy Corser and Ruben Xaus discovered a lack of grip come race day.

Both riders had hinted a potential push for the podium having qualified on the second row of the grid, but while Corser in particular made his presence known at the front of the field in both races, the team would come away with a best of just tenth from the weekend.

Suffering his first race retirement of the season with a crash in the early stages of race two, Corser was frustrated with the outcome but confident the team will learn from the problems for the Nurburgring.

"We are disappointed with the weekend to be honest. We came here with high expectations but we really struggled with grip. We tried a lot of things to improve grip levels but nothing seemed to work. The only time I felt happy with the bike was in race two but sadly I crashed early on.

"Race one I just couldn't get the power down, I felt the front pushing into most corners and I nearly crashed on numerous occasions. I think we have a good idea of what caused the problems this weekend, so we just need to go away, work hard and get focused for the races in Germany."

Xaus, meanwhile, managed an 11th place finish in the second race, but only after struggling with a lack of grip throughout the day.

"To be honest the first race was a disaster. We had good grip on corner entry but after that I just had no feeling - the bike was just spinning everywhere. We have tried our best all weekend to come up with a setting which works at this circuit but in the races it simply didn't happen for us.

"I tried as hard as I could but I still finished 17th. I could have pulled in because the grip levels were so bad, but I am a fighter and I wanted to stay out there and try my best. For race two we made some big changes to the set-up and it was better. Unfortunately I lost a lot of positions in the early laps but I was happy with my overall race pace. We have learnt a lot from race two so I think this will help us in future races."