Having successfully conquered the longest circuit on the racing calendar, Peter Hickman found the smallest circuit a more challenging proposition as he only finished one of the three British Superbike Championship races at Knockhill inside the points.
Fresh from a spectacular fortnight at the 2023 Isle of Man TT, where Hickman won four races - three of which came on the FHO Racing BMW M 1000 RR - and smashed the lap record with a 136.358mph tour of the 37.7-mile circuit, things felt rather more compact around 1.3-mile Knockhill.
"It's been a super tough weekend here at Knockhill and coming from probably the biggest circuit in the world to the smallest doesn’t help,” the Isle of Man TT winner said.
“I tried 110% across the weekend, but for reasons I can't even explain, I don't know why, but we’ve just not had the pace right from the start.”
Consigned to a lowly 16th in qualifying at the Scottish venue, he'd go on to finish in the same position in Saturday’s Sprint race, leaving him outside the points.
After retiring from Sunday’s opener, it wasn’t until the final race of the weekend that he cracked the top 15 on the FHO Racing BMW with 12th place and four points the outcome.
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“The team has worked so hard. We've turned the bike inside out and it’s not seemed to make any difference to the lap times.
"We changed things again for the last race and it did make an improvement where we finished 12th.
"The change was something we hadn’t tried before, and we went forwards for the first time rather than backwards.”
“This weekend we’ve not finished where we want to be, or where we should be with the M1000RR and it’s hard to keep the morale up, but you have to keep plugging away.”
