Pata Honda’s Leon Haslam came away from his team’s home World Superbike round at Assen feeling ‘frustrated’ – even though he bagged an eighth and fifth place finish yesterday.

In race one Haslam felt aggrieved as he felt he could have got a fifth place finish – but a red flag coming out with four laps remaining meant he was unable challenge for a top five place, and had to settle for a respectable eighth.

Time was against the Smalley lad in race two, but it was far more positive. Haslam was one of the quickest rider out on track and appeared to have adapted quite well to the wet track conditions, and was able to get the better of Kawasaki’s Loris Baz and Aprilia’s Marco Melandri. He soon had Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes on his radar but ran out of time and finished in fifth.

“Race one was a bit frustrating really because I felt we could have been easily fifth from where we were. The pace wasn’t that mega but we had a lot of issues again this weekend. It wasn’t right in race one but I think fifth was still possible,” said Haslam.

“The flag put an early end to it anyway. I was confident that, for the dry, we’d made the right move for race two but it was wet. In the first part I was already up to fifth when they stopped it but, in part two, I got caught behind Chaz and it took me a few laps to get by him.

"When I passed him, everyone had gone, but I was able to be one of the fastest guys on track in the last three laps. I managed to get past Baz and Melandri and was closing the gap to Tom but then ran out of time.

“We hadn’t really done any wet testing, so it was positive that we weren’t too far away. The pace was pretty good but starting from where we were on the grid didn’t help either.”