Euro Moto Nürburgring test day: Jähnig (BMW) is the first to challenge Smits (Yamaha)

None of the Euro Moto Superbike riders passed up the chance on Thursday – for a small fee – to take part in the test day ahead of the start of the actual race weekend. For most of the participants, it had been at least a year since they’d last been on the Eifel circuit. Or, as in the case of Markus Reiterberger and Marcel Schrötter, who are only competing again this year in the successor series to the IDM, it had been even longer. The two Bavarians in particular had a hectic journey. Less than 24 hours earlier, the stopwatches were still ticking at the pre-test for the final round of the World Endurance Championship in the south of France.

Whilst Markus Reiterberger sat out the first session, Schrötter was there right from the start after a somewhat short night’s sleep. After all, he still has the best chance of preventing Lukas Tulovic from clinching the title early and keeping the championship up for grabs right up to the final at the Hockenheimring at the end of September. The man of the moment on the test day was clearly Twan Smits, who kept his Apreco Yamaha in first place from start to finish. In the morning, the Dutchman had set the pace with a time of 1:25.1423. A glance at the timesheet is likely to have wiped the smile off Florian Alt’s face. Although the Honda rider was second behind Smits, his deficit of 1.134 seconds is unlikely to have gone down too well with him.

Assen winner Smits sets the pace

At the end of the day, Alt managed to step it up again and, with a time of 1:24.827, closed the gap to six tenths of a second behind Smits, who had further increased the pace at the front. However, the two stragglers, Jan-Ole Jähnig and Markus Reiterberger, had pushed their way up the order in the afternoon, slotting into second and third place between Smits and Alt. Jähnig, on his 25th of 31 laps – Smits had been the hardest-working rider with 53 laps – closed the gap on the leader to 0.145 minutes. In doing so, he also displaced Reiterberger, who had long been in second place.

“Yeah, not a bad day,” said Twan Smits once the work was done. “On a test day like this, it’s not really relevant to look at lap times yet, but the feeling is pretty good. The whole team has been in good form since Assen and we’re working really well together.” At Assen, the Apreco team had swept the board at their home race. Twan Smits secured a one-two, whilst his Supersport team-mate Dirk Geiger also claimed two wins. “We haven’t changed anything on the bike since Assen,” said Smits, “we simply have a good basic set-up and have tried out a few completely different things over the course of the day to see if we can understand the bike better. Of course, I’d love another one-two on Sunday, but we’re not thinking about that. We’re simply focusing on improving the bike in every session and preparing for the races.”

Marcel Schrötter, who had felt his BMW lacked a bit of pace at Assen, started the test day with the least track knowledge. Although his time of 1:24.993 was only good enough for eighth place, he set it on the 44th of 45 laps. So we can expect him to pick up the pace even further on Friday.

Standings after three test sessions