First row on the grid for Markus Reiterberger, but no race on day two at Assen
The weather on the TT circuit in Assen is typical April-weather, as you had everything you can imagine of on the first day of the fourth round of the MOTUL FIM Superbike world championship. The temperatures of the morning practice were freezing. The sun did look through the clouds from time to time, but didn’t really arrange to warm up. Markus Reiterberger and the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team decided to stay with yesterday’s settings for the BMW S 1000 RR and start the third free practice with the set up they finished day one with. „Reiti“ finished in fourth position and was confident for the Superpole qualifying later in the morning.
Step by step Reiterberger made his way through the field during Superpole and 20 minutes to go he already was in fifth position on race tyres. The qualifying had to be red flagged due to a heavy crash of Toprak Razgatlioglu and Ryuichi Kiyonari a few laps to go, when Markus Reiterberger was in third position on qualifying tyres. It meant for the 25-years-old that he secured himself his first ever start from the first row on the WorldSBK grid.
Shortly before the first race of the Motul Dutch round was planned to start on the legendary TT circuit in Assen thick snowflakes and some rain started and race control decided to cancel the first race due to safety conditions. Therefore tomorrow there will be two normal races.
Markus Reiterberger #28, Superpole P3:
„We started the third free practice with only a few small changes today, because it was so cold. We had only around 0°C air temperature and the track had only 3°C. It was really cold, but it worked quite well. I was in fourth position. We used race tires at the beginning of the qualifying. The first six laps were good. We went out early with the qualifiers, which was good for me at the end. Some other riders were in my way and I could not improve my lap time any further before qualifying was red flagged. I secured the third starting position. This is awesome. I have not been in first row yet. I may not have been able to hold onto the third place if the session would not have been stopped, but after last weekend it is nice to be lucky.
I am not too sad that they have cancelled the race at the end to be honest. It is not nice for the people here, but the track conditions are far from ideal and it would have been dangerous to go out and ride a race under these conditions.“
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