Danilo Petrucci Says BMW Is Slow Across Donington

Danilo Petrucci believes BMW’s lack of pace at Donington Park is a greater concern than his physical condition after he finished only 17th in UK WorldSBK FP2.

The Italian returned to competition after almost two months away following his Race 1 crash at Most. Although he still felt some pain in his right knee, Petrucci insisted the injury was not the main limitation, at least during shorter runs.

“Physically, it is not bad. I struggle a little with the right knee and have some pain, but I feel better than I did at the test. At the moment, my physical condition is not a major problem,” Petrucci said.

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The greater difficulty was a motorcycle that appeared to lose time evenly across the circuit. Petrucci could not identify one major weakness that could become the clear focus of development, but the accumulation of smaller deficits left him around one second slower over a full lap.

“We are not really bad in one area, but more or less we are slow everywhere. The amount is not large in each section, but over one lap it becomes one second,” he said.

The situation was further complicated because set-up changes produced little noticeable difference in the motorcycle’s behaviour. Petrucci and team-mate Miguel Oliveira delivered similar feedback, forcing the crew to examine every corner rather than concentrate on one specific technical problem.

A comparison with the previous Donington test also highlighted the performance loss. In broadly similar temperatures, Petrucci said he had been around three to four tenths faster during the test than he was on Friday of the race weekend.

Petrucci has targeted a place inside the top 10 on Saturday, but BMW will need a broader improvement in balance and set-up to achieve it. The main challenge is not solving one obvious weakness, but removing the small losses appearing throughout almost the entire Donington lap.