WorldSBK Aragon analysis: What happened to Redding and BMW…

In the latter stages of the 2021 championship, the BMW WorldSBK project, in its entirety, was looking up. Having signed the obvious race winning talent of Michael van der Mark to race alongside 2013 World Champion Tom Sykes, the official team scored five podiums all in, including a wet race win for VDM and the morale booster of a Superpole win for Sykes at Catalunya.

Fastest is fastest, after all.

These real world results were an indication that the whole M1000RR project was accelerating its potential for achievement steadily.

Losing Sykes, then signing genuine championship challenger after two years at Ducati, Scott Redding, was also maybe a potential step-up for stronger full-race performances, for many people, if not quite all.

When it was obvious that the Bonovo Action BMW team was going to be an completely de facto second works team (BMW referred to it as such in their official communiques) and with the proven winning talents of Eugene Laverty and Loris Baz on board, the 2022 BMW future was looking even brighter. Even the immediate future, with Baz coming back from MotoAmerica in 2021 for two end-of-season rounds at Jerez and Portimao, including two podium finishes in Portugal. He was already top-three fresh, clearly.

Three back-to-back winter tests, at Misano, Jerez and finally a week or so ago at the official pre-season outings at Motorland Aragon, started in the middle of March. Quite cold still. And quite close to the start of the 2022 season, as some said at the time. This was significant to what happened at Motorland, as even the slightly raised temperatures seemed to throw things well off.

Van der Mark, probably the most immediate hope for more BMW podium success, was unfortunate to badly break his lower right