FATAL ACCIDENT OVERSHADOWS WORLDSBK RACE WEEKEND IN JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA.
The tenth race weekend of the 2021 FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK) in Jerez de la Frontera (ESP) was overshadowed by a fatal accident involving Spain’s Dean Berta Viñales . The young rider crashed in Saturday’s Supersport 300 race. The thoughts of BMW Motorrad Motorsport are with Viñales’ family, friends and team. We would like to offer them our sincere condolences.
After the tragic accident, all the remaining races scheduled for Saturday were cancelled. In consultation with Viñales’ family, it was decided to continue the race weekend on Sunday and to stage the races in memory of the young rider. On Sunday morning, the paddock paid its respects with a minute’s silence. Sunday’s itinerary was amended to feature two 20-lap WorldSBK races.
Michael van der Mark from the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team ended race one in seventh place. He then finished eighth in race two.
Michael: “It was a difficult weekend for the WorldSBK paddock. I want to express my condolences to Dean’s family and friends. Today we raced for him. Our results haven’t been bad when you see where we came from. Yesterday, I had no confidence to go faster so I was a bit disappointing. After a lot of studying the data the guys changed a lot on the bike and already this morning in warm-up I felt a big improvement. Also in both of today’s races I felt a massive step forward. And if you look at our lap times, the consistency and also the gap to the winner and the podium guys, I think we made a solid step. That gives me a lot of confidence and that is what we need. We have tried some things that will for sure be helping in the future.”