BMW turns the situation around and Oliveira returns to the podium, but the gap to Ducati is striking

Unexpected third place for the Portuguese rider in Hungary: what changed on the BMW compared to Saturday?

If the Bulega-Lecuona one-two wasn’t surprising in Superbike Race 1 at Balaton Park, the podium achieved by Miguel Oliveira certainly was. On Friday the BMW rider had finished free practice in ninth place and didn’t seem particularly confident. He had set the top 6 as his goal, and the podium seemed hard to reach, especially since some independent Ducati riders also looked more competitive than him. But something changed: the ROKiT BMW Motorrad team worked well on the M 1000 RR and the Portuguese rider managed to get the most out of it, delivering an excellent Superpole (P4) and then a strong Race 1.

Oliveira got a bit stuck behind Yari Montella in the early laps at Balaton Park, but then managed to get the better of him and take a very important podium: "It was a positive Saturday. We made a good step in qualifying; starting from the second row is always good. I got a good start, but Yari outbraked me and I lost a lot of time. I wasn’t fast enough in the last sector to stay close to him and pass. It was tough, but I managed to take third place, create a gap behind me and manage it, finding my rhythm and seeing what I could do. We gathered important data to improve."

The former MotoGP rider also explained what was changed on his BMW M 1000 RR compared to Friday’s free practice: "We changed something in the electronics: nothing major, but on Friday it was clear where I was losing time and we tried to work on it in FP3, even though it was hotter and not easy to repeat the lap times. We managed to improve and I had the potential to be faster."

The gap to the Bulega-Lecuona duo was big in Race 1, twelve and a half seconds from the winner and ten from the runner-up. The 31-year-old from Almada hopes to be a bit closer to the Aruba Ducati Panigales today: "We have a gap of 10–12 seconds, but we’ll give it our all to try to reduce it. We’ll see about the position, but if on Sunday I can fight for the podium twice again, I’ll leave Balaton Park happy."

Oliveira is aware of his potential with the BMW M 1000 RR, a bike on which he feels very comfortable under braking, but with many other aspects to improve in order to seriously think about getting significantly closer to Ducati.