Magny-Cours tricky conditions hinder Team HRC performance

Team HRC has now concluded what turned out to be a challenging seventh round of the Superbike world championship at Nevers Magny-Cours, the race results failing to reflect the riders’ potential and not helped by the cold and wet conditions.

Continuing the weekend’s trend, this morning’s 10-lap Tissot Superpole race ran in wet conditions. Leon Haslam was lying twelfth through lap one, soon finding himself part of a group of four riders. Increasing his pace, the Brit was able to make up three places over the course of the short sprint, placing ninth by lap seven. Losing a little ground in the final laps, the Team HRC rider crossed the line in eleventh place. Alvaro Bautista lost several places through the first turns, placing seventeenth at the end of lap one. Working hard to get into a constant rhythm and make up positions, the Spaniard was up to fourteenth by lap seven, a position he then held to the line.

Lining up on a still wet track for race 2 later in the afternoon, the HRC riders were lying eleventh (Haslam) and fifteenth (Bautista) through the opening stages. Leon was soon able to make up two places but then began to lose ground in the later stages of the race and finished thirteenth as a result. For Alvaro, the race proved similar to yesterday’s race 1, in that he found himself undisturbed by those behind but unable to reach the riders immediately up ahead due to a lack of rear feeling, crossing the line in fifteenth place.

Both riders look forward to the final round of the WorldSBK championship, scheduled to take place at the Estoril circuit in Portugal over the weekend of 16-18 October, where they will seek to regain the positive feeling they had with their machines in recent races.