BMW get serious!
By TMX Archives on 28th May 08
GERMAN giant BMW is now all set to let rip into its first serious off-road venture with its exciting, all-new, G450X four-stroke enduro bike which it has been developing throughout the last year. In fact, last weekend, the ripping started in earnest. The former Inter-national trials rider, Andreas Lettenbichler, finished second to Taddy Blazusiak in the monster Erzberg event in Austria while in the second round of the German Cross Country champs, G450X riders finished first and second in the form of Simo Kirssi and Bert Meyer.
Added to these latest competition successes, BMW has this week been undertaking its first European press test days which have been taking place in Spain. Britain gets its turn next week (still in Spain) and Jonty Edmunds will be in the hot seat for T+MX. We will bring you Jonty's findings as soon as...
Meanwhile, here's what all the excitement is about:
Andreas Lettenbichler: "Erzberg was harder than ever and packed with dirty tricks. The Gerichtsgraben was absolutely crazy, and the Reitwagen-Klamm even topped it. There were 20 people with ropes pulling up bikes and riders. Without outside help it would have been impossible. At the second check point, I broke my foot peg, and then because of this the gear shaft broke so that I had to ride the rest in first gear. I just tried
to take it easy and to ride smoothly to the finish, easy as that...”
Gerhard Forster: "It could have gone better for me. I had a bad start and fought my way up to fifth position. In the Gerichtsgraben I got off the right track and found myself stuck in the rocks. That cost me two places. The bike was working perfectly. It is just so much fun to ride the 450 up banks, just open the throttle and off you go.”
Team manager Wolfgang Fischer: "We were at Erzberg only with a small team because we had parallel races in Walldorf and in Spain. Our small but highly motivated team proved the potential of a modern four-stroke bike and that we can compete with the armada of light two-strokes. BMW four-stroke bikes in the top ten, the result speaks for itself. The performance of Andreas Lettenbichler is sensational. He was leading the race until check point two. Then he lost a foot peg and as a result he couldn't keep up with Blazusiak. I am very happy to see that we are ready to compete for top positions. Now we can attack, let's go!”
In the second race of the German Cross Country Cham-pionship, in the Thuringian city of Walldorf, it was a second victory for Simo Kirssi and the BMW Motorrad team – and it was a double victory! There was no way past the two BMW factory riders, Finn Simo Kirssi and his Saxon junior colleague Bert Meyer were the fastest of the 700 starters in this race.
Looks like BMW are about to make things very interesting off-road with the G450X...