JG Speedfit Kawasaki’s Leon Haslam labelled his start to the seventh round of the MCE British Superbike championship at Brands Hatch as ‘terrible’, but he soon made up for it with two second place finishes, and is only 25 points adrift of Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne in the overall standings.

On Saturday lunchtime Haslam was well outside the top ten times, but his team worked hard and any issues appeared to be solved. He was able to find that extra pace that he had been lacking to battle with the likes of Byrne and Honda Racing’s Jason O’Halloran at the GP track.

The Derby rider did experience a small problem at the start of the second race, and felt that his ZX-10R kept cutting out, and at one point thought that he would have to pull his bike into the pits. But he rode through it and just edged O’Halloran on the line to take second by 0.006s.

“We did start off very, very bad and honestly I expected a bit more in race two and I did have a small problem in the first half of the race with it cutting out and I thought that I would have to pull in and drop back quite fast with people passing on the straight, and luckily it cleared and the bike was handling loads better,” said Haslam at the circuit.

“I felt quite comfortable and felt I could have pushed on a bit more and that was the situation. I will take a second. I didn’t really have an answer for Shakey on those last laps and I was just hanging in there and we will take two seconds here and we need to reassess a few small issues that we had this weekend and we will move on to Cadwell.”

Race two was a repeat of race one with Haslam finding himself locked in a fight for the win with Byrne, but the Panigale rider was just too strong for the JG Speedfit backed Kawasaki of the former World Superbike star.

Speaking after race one Haslam added: “We had a pretty terrible weekend and after Snetterton and Thruxton battling for the win is where I want to be. Just a few areas I was struggling with still, which hindered me a bit. But the boys have done really well, from Saturday lunchtime we were fifteenth so to get it up to second I am really happy.

“Shakey was good off the long corners and I was quite strong on the way in on the brakes, but probably too strong as I was pushing really hard and that was hindering me on the exits as well. It was hard and the laps were ticking away and there was a couple of places I was losing a bit of time, so if we can match them in them places the rest of the track I am quite happy with.”

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