GBmoto’s Peter Hickman found the MCE British Superbike weekend at Knockhill was a learning curve, for both him and the team. The Lincolnshire based rider felt that in Scotland they had not reached their full potential, with tyre problems still causing an issue for the rider.
Race one was tough for Hickman. From ninth on the grid the Englishman battled hard to stay in the top ten, struggling to recreate the pace he had shown earlier in the weekend. Despite this, Hickman managed to bring himself back up to finish just inside the top ten, although his lap time would only be good enough for thirteenth on the grid for the second race of the day.
Race two saw the rider rediscovered some his earlier pace to come through from thirteenth on the grid to finish ninth, completing a set of weekend results without ever dropping outside the top ten. Team-mate Dan Linfoot started just one place ahead of Hickman for the second race, but despite making up a few places early on, fatigue that the rider had been expecting all weekend finally set in, and he was forced to back off the pace to bring the bike home safely.
Hickman has some new ideas for the setup of his bike, which will hopefully put a stop to the front tyre issue that appeared to hamper his weekend. He is now concentrating on Snetterton in three weeks time, where he hopes to improve his lap times to go even faster.
“The weekend started off mega but I don’t think we ever really reached our full potential, it’s definitely something we can learn from. The problem was that I got to my fastest lap times almost straight away in free practice, then no matter what we did with the bike I couldn’t go any faster,” said Hickman.
“It was an amazing effort by the team to get my bike back out after the crash in qualifying, and all things considered things could have been a lot worse. I had an issue with the front tyre in race one which was really frustrating because the same thing happened at Oulton Park, but in race two it was better and I was fighting for seventh for a lot of the race.
“I’ve got some ideas that we can take to Snetterton which will hopefully solve the problem. You can’t knock two top ten results, but I know that we can be faster, so I’ll be pushing hard in a few weeks at Snetterton.”
