JG Speedfit Kawasaki’s Peter Hickman had two completely different races during the MCE British Superbike weekend at Silverstone. In the opening race the British rider experienced a technical problem and retired to the pits, but he turned it all around in race-two to take the win in spectacular fashion.
Hickman was neck-and-neck with Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne and it came down to the last corner on the final rotation where the ZX-10R racer held his nerve and pulled the pin to cross the finishing line in first.
The road racing star was disappointed with qualifying and had to start race-one from sixteenth on the grid. But his crew tried something different with his bike and it worked, and Hickman felt he had the pace to get the win in race-one but he was unable to show his potential after a technical issue.
He started race-two on the front row and after out-pacing Tyco BMW’s Michael Laverty he charged ahead to take a solid win and pipped Byrne to the post, and definitely made amends for the bad luck he experienced a few hours before.
“I was disappointed after qualifying as we went the wrong way with the bike but it is still quite early days for us, we learnt from our mistake and it made a difference today,” said Hickman, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the track.
“We went into warm up with a big change and it was the right direction and we made more of a change in race one and it was 100 percent the right way. I was really surprised that we were so strong early on even with the hard tyre in the first race.
“I was sixteenth on the grid in race-one, I was disappointed I didn’t manage to finish the race because there was a technical issue. It is not anyone’s fault and it was one of those things. The team were really disappointed - I was really disappointed but we made amends for it in race-two.
“I was just trying to keep calm, and it is difficult at the front to keep your head and the Ducati is so loud - it is so off putting when it is behind you, it feels like he is right underneath you, which you don’t get with any other bike.
“I just tried to keep my head and I was quite tight in the hairpin deliberately so he [Byrne] didn’t sneak underneath but I also knew that he was really close so in to Brooklands I just braked that tiny bit later, and a bit too late and made a mistake.
“I ran a little bit wide and that made my entry into Luffield too tight and as soon as I went wide I knew he was going to cut back. I pulled as hard as I could and there was no way I was going to
let that go easily, and opened the gas and luckily enough we had enough grip there to fight back at the line.”
