Red Devils Aprilia’s Leon Haslam battled through the pain barrier to place his machine fourth fastest in the final timed World Superbike free practice outing, even with one broken and two cracked ribs.
The local lad suffered a technical issue in FP2, but overcame the problems to improve his lap time to put down a 1’28.516 - a time well inside the top five. The Smalley rider also felt the benefits of a softer tyre option and will stick with that and will focus on race distance tomorrow.
His Aprilia team have made a plethora of changes to his RSV4 RF including chassis and electronic adaptations. Now Haslam wants to get some rest before he aims for pole position during Superpole two on Saturday.
“I have been better, the ribs are hurting more than I thought they would. In FP3 the guys have worked really hard, and to get P4 I am really happy with the steps that we have made. I will have a bit of a sleep tonight to be ready for tomorrow,” said Haslam, speaking to bikesportnews.com from the track.
“We changed the chassis and electronics and we progressed to the softer tyres today, which everyone else was using. As soon as we put the softer tyres in the laps came a bit easier with the right set-up. I am pretty happy and this is the quickest Aprilia have been on a race tyre around here, and we are making the right steps.
“We will stick with the softer tyre and we will try and put a bit more race distance to it, and we are working on trying to get the bike to stop a bit better for over-taking - and those are the key areas that we have been working on.”
