Pata Honda’s Leon Haslam says that memories of last year’s crash at Assen’s World Superbike round - which effectively ended his title challenge before it began - will not affect his confidence going into this weekend’s encounter at the Dutch track.

The Derbyshire man had to have a rod inserted through the middle of his tibia and also suffered ligament damage in the accident but still managed to race on through the season, albeit in a lot of pain.

“The injury that I picked up in the practice crash last year was a bit of a freak really, so my confidence hasn’t been affected – even in the wet. I’m not going to be running any marathons, but I can now ride the bike how I want to and there are no physical problems,” said Haslam.

“I can’t wait to get to Assen – I love riding there and we’ve made some good progress with the bike recently. We had some issues setting up the bike in Aragon but that was more us than the bike, I think, and we got some OK results, even though I don’t like that place really.

“Hopefully, we can move things on again at Assen, which I really do like riding. We haven’t really tested the new bike in any wet weather yet but, looking at the forecast, we might get a chance to this weekend.”