Haslam ready to go all out against Biaggi
Added on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Haslam ready to go all out against Biaggi
Leon Haslam has admitted that he will not be fully fit this weekend at Imola but has pledged to go “all out” to close the gap on championship leader Max Biaggi in front of the Italian’s home fans.
Haslam sits 58 points behind championship leader Biaggi with a maximum of 100 points still up for grabs going in to the penultimate round but his title hopes suffered a major blow last time out in Germany crashing in race one – although the Suzuki man still managed to finish sixth.
But 27 year old has pledged to fight for the best possible result this weekend despite the injury, knowing that he faces a tough challenge if he is to close the gap in the standings.
“Since the last round at the Nurburgring, I have been having a lot of physiotherapy on my knee,” he said. “The problem is that ligaments take quite a long time to mend properly and because of that my knee is not up to full strength yet. I haven’t got full movement and all the power back yet, but I don’t think it’s going to affect me too much once I am on the bike. We’ll see how it goes in practice, but we may decide to put on some strapping and give it some support. I may also strap up the hand a bit as it is OK in certain directions but not so good in some others. Once again, we’ll se how it behaves during practice on Friday.
“We tested here at Imola earlier in the year and the first day was pretty good. The second wasn’t as good because I had a couple of crashes. We tried some tyres there, so it’ll be interesting to see what tyres are brought this weekend. Imola is very technical track and there is a lot to it. It’s what I call ‘an old school’ track and once you’ve got it right, you know you’ve got it right. I think it has many different characteristics and parts of it will suit some bikes and not others, but all bikes will be good there in some areas. Because of the points advantage Max Biaggi now has, all I can do is to go all-out in both races and hope he makes some mistakes, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
