Despite their best efforts, Jonas Folger and his Bonovo Action / MGM Racing Performance team remained unrewarded on Saturday in the Czech Republic.
Jonas Folger’s bad luck seems to be sticking to his heels this season. After a promising first free practice session on Friday morning, the BMW rider and his team encountered a number of hurdles on the second day at the sixth round of the 2021 Superbike World Championship.
In FP3 early in this morning, Folger suffered a small fall when losing the front wheel in the penultimate corner of the new WorldSBK circuit after setting just a few laps. Fortunately, he got off lightly, but his crew had their hands full to fix the BMW M 1000 RR Superbike in time for Superpole less than two hours later. With their forces united, all the effort succeeded, but due to the lack of track time during the final free practice session, the 27-year-old Bavarian rider was unable to regain confidence quickly enough and had to start the first race of the weekend from the seventh row of the starting grid.
Thanks to a number of retirements and falls, but foremost to a strong overtaking manoeuvre, Folger was initially able to move up from position 21 to 16th in the early stages of the first race of the weekend. Unfortunately, the BMW rider was powerless on lap seven when his engine unfortunately broke down.
#94 Jonas FOLGER (Bonovo Action / MGM Racing Performance, BMW M 1000 RR)
Grid position: 21st / Race 1: NC
“After a positive start to the weekend, the tide unfortunately turned. Apart from a small defect, yesterday’s FP1 was quite ok. But this morning I crashed very early in FP3. It was nothing bad, but it took a long time for me and my bike to get back to the pits. Once there, my guys did o’t have much fun because the time to Superpole was pretty tight. They just managed to get the bike ready for this qualifying session again. So, I only did two laps in the morning and then I was not able to manage to set a decent lap time in qualifying, which was certainly also due to the less-than-ideal preparation for this all-important session. The starting position for the race was therefore conceivably bad and unfortunately, we were not really fast either. Soon after the start, I noticed that something was not running smooth with the engine when I was shifting, until the engine unfortunately broke down a little later. At the moment, things hit us pretty hard.”
#CZEWorldSBK - Superpole:
1 Jonathan REA / GBR / Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK / Kawasaki ZX-10RR / 1´31.684
2 Toprak RAZGATGLIOGLU / TUR / Pata Yamaha with BRIXX WorldSBK / Yamaha YZF R1 / 1´31.751 +0.067
3 Scott REDDING / GBR / Aruba.it Racing - Ducati / Ducati Panigale V4 R / 1´32.158 +0.474
21 #94 Jonas FOLGER / GER / Bonovo Action MGM Racing Performance / BMW M 1000 RR / 1´34.499 +2.815
#CZEWorldSBK - Race 1 Classification (19 Laps):
1 Toprak RAZGATLIOGLU / TUR / Pata Yamaha with BRIXX WorldSBK / Yamaha YZF R1 / 34´14.370
2 Scott REDDING / GBR / Aruba.it Racing - Ducati / Ducati Panigale V4 R / +0.040
3 Andrea LOCATELLI / ITA / Pata Yamaha with BRIXX WorldSBK / Yamaha YZF R1 / +13.798
NC #94 Jonas FOLGER / GER / Bonovo Action MGM Racing Performance / BMW M 1000 RR
#WorldSBK Standing:
1 Jonathan REA / GBR / Kawasaki / 243
2 Toprak RAZGATLIOGLU / TUR / Yamaha / 231
3 Scott REDDING / GBR / Ducati / 182
19 #94 Jonas FOLGER / GER / BMW / 8
#CZEWorldSBK – Time Schedule for Sunday August 8th (CET):
09:00 - 09:15 Warm-Up
11:00 Superpole-Race (10 Laps - 42.120 km)
15:15 Race 2 (22 Laps - 92.664 km)
