Hannes Soomer: Back in the Euro Moto after a stint on the Petrucci BMW

Hanners Soomer had missed the Masteroil-alpha-Van Zon-BMW team’s last Euro Moto outing in Brno and had instead stepped in as a stand-in for the BMW team in the Superbike World Championship at Misano in Italy. “But now I’m glad to be back with my Euro Moto team,” he said before leaving his home country of Estonia. The heat at Most left the man from north-eastern Europe relatively unfazed, and he set the pace in the first two free practice sessions. After Superpole 2, he was only beaten by last year’s title holder Lukas Tulovic, securing a place on the front row with second place.

That was as far as he could go

The start of the first race went quite well, but over the race distance the Estonian couldn’t quite keep up with the pace of the leaders. Towards the end of the race, his BMW team-mate Toni Finsterbusch managed to squeeze past Soomer, who consequently finished sixth. The second race on Sunday in the sweltering heat of Most was similarly tough and ended with the same result.

“We simply couldn’t get the special Pirelli tyres to work properly for any of us,” said team boss Werner Daemen, assessing the situation, “so we simply had no grip. Otherwise, things didn’t go badly, but the results weren’t really good; we just couldn’t get the tyre issue sorted out.”

“Actually a good weekend,” says Soomer, “but a mixed Sunday. We lacked a bit of pace today in the hotter conditions. I’m sure we’ll get that sorted by Oschersleben, because I felt good on the bike.”