Aprilia Racing’s Sylvain Guintoli is struggling to ride his bike as he is still in a lot of pain, after dislocating his shoulder after crashing his push bike a few weeks ago. The rider did manage to put in some laps in today’s World Superbike practice sessions but his team are not changing anything on the machine as the Frenchman is struggling to ride it at the moment.

Guintoli did make it out on to the track at the last round, two weeks ago in Moscow. He managed to take home some valuable points, and hopes he can complete both races on Sunday, and try and make it through to the Superpole stages tomorrow.

“I am looking at the shoulder now, and we are not looking at the bike. We are not changing it a lot as I can’t ride it, I am still struggling with the shoulder and this track is quite painful and it is quite fast and have to lean quite quickly. All I have to do is get more confident and try and ease the pain so I am doing drug therapy more than setting up the bike at the minute,” said Guintoli, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the circuit this evening.

“I was confused when I had the crash and at first I could not see how I would ride the bike after only five days of dislocating my shoulder. But I thought at Moscow I would have a go, it was a struggle but with the pain killing injections and taping it was OK, but in the end I felt like a junkie. But I did have a bit of luck with Sykes retiring and Eugene crashing so it was not that bad.

“Today Tom was really fast on one lap, but the rest of us are all pretty much together. It is difficult to say, but if anyone needs to improve it would be me because I am not feeling good now, I am physically not ready."

The England based Frenchman does not want to have his shoulder causing him unwanted problems for the remainder of the championship, so he is having an appointment on Monday to see if an operation would be the best option.

“It is a possibility that I might need an operation on the shoulder, we have to make that decision pretty quickly, obviously to allow us as much recovery time before the next round. I have an appointment on Monday and we will see what’s best. I don’t want to hang around for the rest of the season with a bad shoulder and September is where the championship will be won or loss, so I want to be fully fit for that.

“You need to be consistently fast and not crash, but that is why I went out at Moscow as I know I need the points, but anything can happen and I need to put together something solid for the race. I like the track and it is suited to the Aprilia, it would be better with two fit shoulders but you have got to do what you have got to do.”