After spending days testing to sort out their electronics problems, Pata Honda duro Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea both fell foul of brake issues during the Motorland Aragon World Superbike double header.
Rea managed to secure a fourth place in the opening session but couldn't match it in the second outing when a brake adjuster failed while Haslam simply said he had issues over both races.
"It’s hard to know what to say, really, because it was clear that we were on a bit of a high coming to the races here after the test two weeks ago. Immediately on Friday morning the bike felt a lot better and we worked really hard with the guys all weekend and put in a long run to understand the electronics setting," said the Irishman.
"I feel that we got it in a satisfactory area where I was happy to push, but I’m disappointed with the overall performance. In the races I was unable to compete with the guys around me on the straight, which made riding the rest of the circuit very intense. In race one we had a game plan that worked out better than we expected because a few riders had some misfortune.
"We plugged away and were there to pick up the pieces and finished fourth. For me it felt like a podium because we’ve come from a long way back and we kind of had the feeling that we were climbing a ladder. Then in race two it was like someone kicked me back off it because I had a problem with the brake adjuster. The brake kept winding itself in and for one lap I tried to ride with it but the lever was coming back to the bar.
"I was going to be a risk to other riders so I came in to fix that. Again, my pace was strong when I rejoined which is a real shame because I felt like we deserved some more points in race two. We go to Assen with no more testing which gives the guys some downtime. I think we all need it because we’ve had a lot of testing recently, but we’ll hopefully learn from these issues and start again in Assen."
Haslam added: "IOt was a tough start to the weekend with the issues we had on Friday and then Saturday even more so with the crash in qualifying and then the technical problem with a broken sensor in FP2. We finally got the bike running in Superpole, which I was really happy about and we found a really good amount of time. Today we’ve just had brake issues. Race one was worse than race two but the problems have kind of determined our results and they are long old races when you have those kind of problems."