The opening WorldSBK race of the ‘Riviera di Rimini Round’ was an eventful one for the Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team and for Stefan Bradl, who was forced back to the pits during lap two due to a technical issue. The 27-year-old German eventually returned to the track and completed another 11 laps, but they were not enough for him to be classified at the end of the race.

Bradl was running in 17th position before he started to drop further down the order and then returned to the pits. The team did an extensive check of the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP2 and, later, Stefan got back on track to test the changes made to the bike and to collect some useful data ahead of race two.

The second race of the 2017 FIM Superbike World Championship at Misano World Circuit will get underway tomorrow at 13:00 local time (GMT +2), after the usual 15-minute warm up scheduled at 9:00.


Stefan Bradl 6 - DNF

There’s not much to say, really. The race was virtually over for me on the first lap and, although I had to stop, the team was able to check what was going on and make a quick fix. This allowed me at least to go out again and complete 10-11 laps to check if everything was working correctly and collect some data. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow.

Pieter Breddels

It was another hard day at the office but surely one to learn from. We are trying many different things to give Stefan the right package to perform well but clearly something didn’t go the right way today. We were able to collect some valuable data, though, after he returned to the track and we can now make some comparisons in order to try something different for tomorrow.