Eugene Laverty will return to a BMW in this year's WorldSBK series but it will be an M1000RR and in a satellite team.

The Irishman lost out on his factory chair, some would say unfairly, but has a seat in the RC Squadra Corse outfit and is determined to make it count in 2021.
“I don’t want to make any predictions until I’ve ridden this new M bike in testing. I am optimistic because I was really starting to get to grips with the bike towards the end of the year," said Laverty.

"I got that pole position at Magny-Cours. The thing was last year, I know it was a short season for everybody, but we really decided quite early on to take one step backwards to take two step forwards. We spoke about making the bike more user friendly.

"We knew the bike was strong over one lap, we’d seen that previously, but if we wanted to make the bike strong for 20 laps then we really had to really go backwards a little bit to take away that all-out performance to make the bike more consistent over 20 laps and we did that towards the end of the year.

"I’m in it for the long game, I want this bike to be on top of the podium. All the work we did last year, hopefully we can reap the rewards of that in 2021.

“I know after last year there were certain tracks where we were really strong, and certain tracks, unfortunately like the last one in Estoril, where we really struggled.

"Tracks with some hard braking and really slow corners were the tracks where we suffered the most. I know the strength of the bike at, for example, Phillip Island, unfortunately not the season opener this year, but somewhere like there where it’s fast and flowing, the BMW is amazing.

"We need to capitalise on the fast, flowing tracks and work to make the bike better in the tight, twisty stuff, make the bike accelerate better, and of course accelerate out of those slow corners.

Power and aerodynamics are the biggest differences between the M and S1000RR bikes as the 2021 machine has more rpm

The main thing has to be the power. That’s the main one, we’re going to have more RPM and go faster in a straight line! And then also that accompanied with the wings. Nowadays, if you’ve got power, you need to be able to control it and the wings are really going to help us with that.

"It is a continuation of last year’s bike, it’s really an evolution. I will still be able to start with my base setting, the work we did last year, but this bike is going to be a big step forward.

“From what I understand with the BMW winglets, I think it’s a really good compromise. We’re going to be able to use those winglets to control the power on corner exit, but the key is to not have those disturb the bike in the mid-corner.

"I want to test the bike at the Supported test with the wings on and wings off to really get an understanding of what they do. Sometimes riders get fascinated by new shiny parts and they go straight for it. For me, I really want to understand everything about the new package so that’s the important thing.”