BMW Motorrad Motorsport team battle hard at WEC GP of Spain

 Hoping to improve the performances of their four team riders Juha Salminen, Simo Kirssi, David Knight and Marko Tarkkala the BMW Motorrad Motorsport team took to the start of the GP of Spain - round two of the '09 World Enduro Championship - knowing that the event would be a challenging one for them. With the opening round of the series having unexpectedly delivered less than welcome results, with just one week to work on the difficulties encountered in Portugal all concerned knew that significantly better results would be hard to achieve.

In complete contrast to the season opener the GP of Portugal was an extremely wet and largely muddy event, with heavy rain during the second half of the opening day and then throughout Saturday night making day two particularly demanding. Despite hoping for better Juha Salminen claimed the team's best result with fifth in the Enduro 2 class on day. In the Enduro 2 class Juha Salminen's event frustratingly got off to a less than perfect start, as he placed 18th in class on the Friday night Super test following a fall. Thankfully, day one started well with a solid second in class on the opening extreme test.

Performing consistently during the first half of the first day the seven-time world champion wasn't quite able to maintain his pace during Saturday afternoon with mistakes on the extreme test hampering his result. Eventually Juha placed ninth in class. Day two saw a vast improvement in the results for Salminen. Performing well on the extreme, motocross and enduro tests Juha finished inside the top 10 of the E2 class on all but one of the day's special tests, where a fall resulted in him placing 13th in class. Ending day two an eventual fifth in the Enduro 2 category, were it not for his mistake the Finn would certainly have been close to a podium result.

The '09 World Enduro Championship now takes a three-week break before heading to Iglesias, Sardinia for the GP of Italy. Markus Theobald - BMW G 450 X Project Leader: "It goes without saying that everyone in the team hoped that we would have better results this weekend than we did at the first round of the championship, but realistically that was always going to be difficult to achieve. Despite knowing that we were coming to a race where the terrain would be different to that in Portugal, we only had a few days to test between the two events. We worked hard to improve things for the riders but we knew it would be difficult to greatly improve our results. "We do now have a clearer picture of what our riders are experiencing. We know that on some special tests they are able to put in fast special test times, but mistakes are common, and these mistakes are holding them back. We need to understand why in some situations they are fast and can ride freely and to their full potential, and why on other occasions they are unable to give 100 per cent without experiencing mistakes.

"Despite the event being such a demanding race we didn't experience any mechanical problems, which is extremely positive. We now have a few weeks before the next round of the world championship and despite having a lot of work to do we are confident that at the GP of Italy all the team riders will be more confident and able to ride harder on all tests."