Challenging start to '09 World Enduro Championship

The opening round of the '09 World Enduro Championship -the GP of Portugal, staged in Penafiel close to Porto -proved to be a demanding one for the BMW Motorrad Motorsport team. Confident of strong results following encouraging performances on behalf of all team riders at the recent opening round of the Spanish Enduro Championship, the two-day

In the Enduro 2 class Juha Salminen did everything he could to secure a podium finish yet despite winning two extreme tests and improving his pace as the day progressed was unable to finish higher than fifth in class. Finishing eighth following a consistent day's riding was Juha's Enduro 2 class team-mate Simo Kirssi.

On day two Juha twice crashed on the extreme test, which ended his chances of bettering his day one result. Losing a considerable amount of time on both occasions the Finn placed an eventual sixth in class with Kirssi two places behind in  eighth following another consistent day.

The '09 World Enduro Championship moves to Catalonia this coming weekend where the Moto Club Igualada hosts the GP of Spain.

for, and of course we are disappointed with the way the opening round of the '09 World Enduro Championship has finished.

Even though we knew that this year would be anything but easy, we were looking forward to the start of the new championship with real optimism. Firstly, we have to analyze where and why our riders lost time in the enduro and motocross special tests. Therefore we

need informative feedback from the riders. One thing that is certain is that we did not do enough testing on soft, lose tracks, like in Portugal. There were some positive points, like the fact that both Juha and David won some of the extreme tests, but sadly that was overshadowed by their eventual finishing results.

Although there is just one week before the next round of the world championship we will do everything we can to improve our competitiveness there. Everyone on the team is extremely motivated and want to put these results behind us as quickly as possible."