Pata Honda’s Leon Haslam is not a happy rider this evening, after ‘bike issues’ caused a problem in both World Superbike races at his home track of Donington Park this afternoon.

The weekend started off well for the Smalley rider as ended up on the front row after a successful wet Superpole session. But in the first race he was caught up in a crash involving Voltcom Suzuki’s Eugene Laverty, and had to go wide in race two after getting close to an altercation on track involving Aprilia’s Marco Melandri and Kawasaki’s Loris Baz.

Haslam believes there are improvements to be made to his Honda, and feels that it’s quite sensitive and lacking race-pace to competitive with the top riders. But the Brit hopes this can be rectified in the next round at Sepang.

“Definitely unlucky today as I got caught out with Eugene’s crash in race one and then in another incident with Melandri and Baz in race two, but in all honesty I had serious issues in both races and I feel that I didn’t have the pace to fight for podiums here and we were in a losing battle,” said Haslam, speaking to bikesportnews.com from the circuit.

“But we have some issues in the dry that we have to rectify but we have to think ahead to Malaysia and rectify some problems from there.  I want to get the bike more rideable, as it’s quite sensitive and Jonathan has proven that when the bike works it can be super competitive and it is just a very narrow window. I haven’t had it quite sorted just yet in any races and Jonathan has managed to get results in a few sessions.

“I want to be at the front every weekend and that’s how you win championships. We can be fast and Jonathan had faster pace last year here on not as good a bike. We need to analyse the data from today and resolve the issues for the next round.”

Click here for times