If BMW's Leon Haslam has learned to be one thing in the last few years, it is diplomatic. Even though he is having a nightmare season with the BMW Motorrad World Superbike squad, outwardly he isn't giving anything away. Inwardly, however, he must be screaming.
In the first set of sessions at Motorland Aragon, last year's series runner-up could only manage a brace of 14th places and is two slots behind team-mate Troy Corser on the provisional grid even though the veteran Aussie can barely walk after his massive highside last weekend.
But the PR spiel is now barely hiding Haslam's frustration with the electronics that simply will not do his bidding half the time and try to spit him off the other half. We couldn't reach him on the phone tonight but even through the team spin you can tell he isn't impressed:
“At the minute we are trying to work through a few issues, ones which have been affecting us over the last few races. Today we focused on trying to fine tune the setting we have, as the track temperature is extremely high in relation to the last time we tested here," he said.
"Tomorrow is a new day, the team is working hard, as always, to incorporate my feedback and give me what I need from the bike. We will have to see what tomorrow brings. It is just a case of working hard to try and find the solution we are looking for.”
Corser, however, is a lot more forthright on the problems, not least of which is the team appear to have lent their best data man to the satellite Italia team, and he isn't rushing back to the factory squad.
"It’s been another frustrating day and although I have some pain on the bike, I don’t think it’s affecting my riding. I can cope with the pain OK, but it would be nice to have the bike working properly and doing what I want it to do, instead of having problems. The problems are not new ones, but it seems that our bike is very sensitive to changes and when that happens the electronics don’t seem to manage what’s going on. The bike seems very sensitive to grip level and the heat of the track and we need to be able to calculate what to do to improve in this area. If we move the weight around the bike to improve the grip, the balance of the bike is affected and the engine braking gets affected also," said the Aussie.
"At the moment, the BMW Italia team seems to be able to manage their bikes a bit better, but maybe that is because their mechanics and technicians have many, many years of experience - more than most of our team. Also, they have Max, who used to work for our team. At first, I thought that he was just being lent to them to help them progress quickly and that he would return. He’s a very experienced telemetrist and that is the kind of person you need to work with, analyse the date and then interpret what we riders say before tailoring the electronics to suit. Every rider is different and what settings work with one rider usually are not the best for another. It takes time, but there’s no substitute for experience.
"I rode a bit cautiously today because the last thing I wanted or needed was another crash. Actually my lap times are not far off at all and once again one second separates just the top eleven. I am sure that my aches and pains will get less and less and I don’t see them as being a problem on the bike this weekend. Hopefully, we will sort out our problems and do well in qualifying and Superpole tomorrow."
