Ahead of Round 2 of the FIM World Superbike Championship at the Chang International Circuit in Thailand, Milwaukee BMW riders Josh Brookes and Karel Abraham and team principal Shaun Muir give their thoughts:

Josh Brookes:

“I’ve been around the track to have a look at it, but you can’t fully understand the nature or style of it until you’re on the bike. The temperature here is being talked about a lot and the heat will make racing more difficult, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference to the results.”
The guys have made a lot of changes to the bike since Phillip Island, so for me the focus right now is on setting the bike up correctly and to get the maximum from it.

We have to improve on what we achieved at Phillip Island [10th in Race 1, 9th in Race 2], so hopefully I can do better than that at Chang. We’ve done a lot of work, and we will do our best to demonstrate the progress we have made.”

Karel Abraham:

“I only did a couple of sighting laps today on a scooter but I really like the track; it looks fast and I think the racing will be really exciting. The weather will a big factor too because it’s much hotter than Australia was.

It’s difficult to say where we will be in the races because I haven’t ridden this track before, and we need to gain more experience of it as a team so that we can make progress on the chassis set-up and the electronics.

If we can get on top of those elements of the bike then I think we can move up the field for sure, and that’s what we will aim to do throughout the weekend.”

Shaun Muir, team principal:

“We’ve been analysing the data from Phillip Island in greater detail, and it’s helped us anticipate some of the changes at the Chang International Circuit. I think we will take another step forward with the electronics and throttle connection, and we’re working hard on getting the best of the power from the BMW unit.

Both our riders are new to the circuit so their track familiarisation laps will be very important heading into Free Practice 1, and we’ll make some chassis changes to deal with the heavy braking areas at Chang.

Ideally we can quickly establish ourselves in the top 12 in practice, and our first target for the weekend is to get one or both riders into Superpole 2.”


 Free Practice begins on Friday 11th; FP1 at 03:15 GMT, FP2 at 06:30 GMT