Haslam plays down championship talk
Added on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
Haslam plays down championship talk
Leon Haslam has moved quickly to play down the hype surrounding his World Superbikes podium in Australia two weeks ago and claimed that his focus is solely on developing his own skills and supporting the new Stiggy Honda team.
Haslam, one of five British riders in this year’s World Superbikes championship, stole many of the headlines at the opening round of the season as the rookie on the privateer Honda secured a podium and top-six place in the two races at Phillip Island.
But the man from Derbyshire has been quick to play down any talk of a possible title challenge but does expect more success in 2010.
“In terms of my own ambitions, this is not my year to challenge for the championship or race wins really,” he said. “The team is completely new as is the challenge for myself.
“I’m certain we can challenge for the world title in 2010 and regular race wins but, having said that, if there’s an opportunity to win I’m not going to turn it down.”
Haslam was speaking ahead of the season’s second round in Qatar on Saturday, another track where he does have some, albeit limited, test experience.
“The Losail track offers a completely different challenge for myself and the Stiggy Honda team,” he added.
“I was fortunate enough to get some practice around the track in Qatar when Honda invited me to the launch of their new road-going machine at the end of last year. I’ve never raced there before so that track time was really valuable.
“The biggest improvement we need from our machine is top speed. Qatar has a very long start/finish straight and I know from Phillip Island that we were about 5-6kph down on where we needed to be.
“But the engine development company in Italy are aware of that and they have made some improvements which should at least see me closer to a top speed that I need.”
