BMW racing boss Sven Blusch admits: there wasn’t enough time – not before 2028

Following two World Championship titles with Toprak Razgatlioglu in 2024 and 2025, BMW suffered a number of setbacks in the 2026 Superbike World Championship. The Turkish rider’s move to MotoGP forced the Munich-based manufacturer to restructure the project. With Miguel Oliveira and Danilo Petrucci, BMW signed two experienced and fast riders, but so far they have managed no more than four third-place finishes – partly because both suffered serious injuries during the season and were sidelined for extended periods.

The problem is that, following the loss of the Bonovo team, BMW is now represented in the field by just its two factory bikes. There is no satellite team to provide additional data.

Motorsport Director Sven Blusch makes no secret of the fact that BMW faces major challenges. “This year, we’ve opted for a long-term plan in the World Superbike Championship, ”explained the North German. “We didn’t have enough time to organise ourselves in such a way that we could have more than two riders on the grid. We’d be very pleased about that, but it has to be done in the right way; only then can we benefit from it. We still have our test team, with whom we can collect track data, which helps us. The plan for the future would be to have more bikes on the starting grid, but as long as we didn’t have a long-term plan, this step was difficult to take. If you talk to a team and can’t offer them the chance to work with a manufacturer for the next three years, then it’s not easy to convince them to make the switch. It requires the right moment and the right team; then we could take that step.”

BMW is waiting for the right opportunity

The disadvantages a manufacturer with two bikes faces compared to one with nine cannot be dismissed. Especially when there is such a close exchange of data as there is between the Ducati riders. SPEEDWEEK.com wanted to know whether Blusch had included the topic of a satellite team when drawing up the long-term plan with BMW’s management and board of directors.

“If the opportunity arises for us to do it the way we want to, then we’ll keep that in mind,” the racing director confirmed. “Over the past few months, however, we haven’t been able to steer things in the direction we’d like. When you bring a new team on board, you have to put in a fair bit of work and resources. Alongside the development of our motorbike, we simply couldn’t manage that as well. We’ve also been focusing on the Endurance World Championship and customer racing. That’s why it wasn’t possible for us to push any harder to have a satellite team ready as early as next year.”

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