Reigning Pirelli National Superstock Champion Ilya Mikhalchik made his ZYN British Superbike Championship debut at Oulton Park last week with the ROKiT BMW Motorrad British Superbike Race team as the Ukrainian prepares for his latest challenge.
The new ROKiT BMW Motorrad British Superbike Race team was unveiled ahead of the final R&G Official test, with the team making positive progress throughout the two days on track ahead of the new season.
Mikhalchik has a wealth of experience with BMW, impressing last season by winning the Superstock class in his first season in the UK, and has been getting to grips with the Superbike specification BMW M 1000 RR ahead of next week’s opening round.
Mikhalchik said: “I’m really excited to be on the grid this year in the Superbike class. I’m really looking forward to the first round. It’s clear that for now we are missing a little bit of track time from the pre-season and winter test compared to the other riders, but we did a good job in the test. I did a lot of laps around Oulton Park and the target was to learn the track and to feel the bike, to give feedback and to understand where we can improve.
“The pace of the bike was actually pretty good since it was the first laps and I’m just happy that I could ride again and from this we can start to build a base. The bike feels like it has really good potential and I’m sure when we come to the tracks that I really know well, like Donington I think we will be in a little bit of a different situation compared to Oulton Park. But at Oulton Park I won last year in Superstock and I will still take as much as I can away and start to close the gap to the front.
“In each session and with each lap we will try to make steps to put it all together and to also adapt fast, as the bike is new to me. With this bike without electronics and especially on the tracks where you need to understand what you need to do on the bike to go faster, because the European style of the fast tracks doesn’t work the same as on the tricky UK tracks. So I need to work and completely understand where you need to do what on the bike, where to go fast and find where the lap time is coming and to keep everything under control.
“So we will work on it and step-by-step, we will make progress and I think we are coming to the first round to learn more and more. We are looking forward to starting the race with the top guys from the UK.”