GoldBet BMW’s Chaz Davies did not have the best World Superbike weekend in France, after a ‘strange’ crash in race one ended any hopes of him gaining valuable points and he was hampered by setup and grip issues in the final outing where he finished in fifth.

In the first Superbike race Davies lost the front on lap two and came back to the pit to fix the bike but had to retire. In race two both Davies and his team-mate Marco Melandri made a good start, and the Powys resident was able to pass his Italian colleague and then battled with Althea Racing’s Davide Giugliano to take fifth.

But in the final race the Welshman had to contend with grip issues and a distinct lack of speed, and concluded that he did not have the right setup to fight for a possible podium on Sunday.

“In race one the crash was strange, I was off the brakes but lost the front slightly and I couldn’t recover it. I slid for ages and tried to get back up as I was holding the bike but in the end there was nothing I could do,” said Davies.

“I picked up the bike but there was a lot of dirt in the throttle so it was too dangerous to continue once we’d got back to the pits. Considering we missed the twenty three laps of race one which would have provided valuable data the bike didn’t feel too bad in the early laps of race two.

“However later on I started to struggle when the tyre dropped a little bit and the bike got a bit more nervous at the rear. When the overall grip level dropped I started to push the front again and couldn’t turn as I wanted. All in all, we perhaps lost out a bit from missing the time in race one but no excuses, we weren’t fast enough and didn’t get the right set up.”