BMW's racing ambitions for S1000RR Superbike

HERE'S a transcript of the speech about BMW's ambitions for their new Superbike, the S1000RR, given by the General Director of BMW Motorrad, Mr Hendrik von Kuenheim.

"Now let me briefly give you the status of our entry into the Superbike World Championship: Today I can confirm that our preparations are proceeding according to plan in every respect: In compliance with the rules of the Series, the new motorcycle will be available to customers in 2009 and we will build 1,000 production models by the end of next year.

We are implementing our racing activities in close cooperation with our partner Alpha-Racing, a specialist very experienced in motorsport. Located near Munich, Alpha-Racing have already started work in a special production hall specifically for this purpose.

The process of building up the team is proceeding at full swing and we have already filled the key positions. The team is a combination of specialists from BMW and members of the Alpha-Technik racing crew, as well as further specialists from professional Superbike racing.

Choosing the development and test riders for our racing machine, we are currently operating in a revolving system to gain as much experience as possible. The selection of test riders ranges from experienced riders still active today all the way to young 'top guns'.

In the upcoming weeks and months we will systematically start production of the racing machine in its individual power and performance stages, testing the new model as we go along.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we naturally realise that the established teams have many years of experience. But we wish to take up this challenge in particular and have put together a highly motivated team precisely for this purpose, a team which will prove the performance of our new motorcycle in professional racing.

Naturally, we will have to go through a certain process of learning ­ which is precisely why we have set ourselves realistic targets for the time being: In our first year in the Superbike World Championship we seek to bring home several places in the Top 10 and to consistently close the gap to the top teams. In year 2 we plan to catch up with the top teams and to win our first places on the podium. And our medium-term objective, obviously, is to win the World Championship!"