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WorldSBK Portimao: Temperatures severely hampering fickle Fireblade

Life in the early stages of the outwardly and inwardly impressive HRC squad in WorldSBK is tough enough for Leon Haslam and his team-mate Alvaro Bautista, as the all-new Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade is proving a fickle beast to say the least.

From morning to afternoon, it seems like it may as well be a different bike altogether which is causing not-inconsiderable consternation.

“For me it is a day of two halves,” said Haslam. “Listening to Alvaro earlier it was pretty much the opposite of what he was saying this morning. We came with the setup from our test and did the whole session, 20-laps with the same tyre, and was in the top three within a few tenths of the fastest and consistent.

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"So, we had problems, and things we wanted to improve. But like Alvaro said, and what I agree with, is that when a factor changes - if the temperature gets hotter, or try a different tyre, just a simple thing like different gearing - it changes many other things in a very, very negative way.”

Pleased with his morning, Haslam was in trouble this afternoon, and not just with his bike.

In the afternoon it was a bit of a disaster for me. Physically I was struggling because I have got a big abscess in my face. I have been in the Clinica all day.

"Also from a bike point of view we tried a different tyre that I didn’t like this afternoon and it was pretty much a disaster. We put the good tyres in before the end but then we had a mechanical problem with the rear brake. This afternoon we did not get to show anything. But this morning I was actually very happy.”

Haslam’s medical issue is an infected abscess in the left side of his face, caused by a tooth that he thought had been repaired. “My abscess is one that I have had repaired about a month ago and it started up in Jerez and it flared up again here.

"I have been on antibiotics for the past two days. It seems to be OK for about 30 seconds when I drink cold water when I drink cold water and then if flares up again. Yes, and it has gone to my temple and also my ear. Teeth – I hate teeth problems. It is the worst pain.”

His pain and swelling were an annoyance to Haslam but it was his bike issues that were arguably even more painful to endue. “This was something separate for today. Generally this afternoon was difficult because the consistency of what we wanted to try, from having such a good morning, felt like a very bad afternoon.”

Given that HRC came back in 2019 with an effort run by Moriwaki and Althea on the ground in WorldSBK, but arrived with an all new bike in WorldSBK and a whole new ex-MotoGP/moto2 team with it, many had expected moe progress than the results sheets show. And with five months since the last race in lockdown to develop things away from the track…

He believes the team has all the elements, all the tools, to succeed. “The hardest thing is that as a rider you want things to happen now,” said Haslam. “When it is a cool track and like this morning, and also in Jerez, we were within one or two tenths of the fastest riders. So there are glimmers of what it can be but the consistency of putting that all together in two 45-minute sessions and also go racing with variance of track temperatures.

We are competing against Ducati, Kawasaki that have all the data for the last five six years – Yamaha – all of them. So we have done two races and here or four races before that. It was a brand new bike that we arrived with. When Ducati arrived they had done one and a half years of testing with this bike.

"It is not comparable to anyone else, we run our own programme, and we have done two races. The potential for me is super-high and in the lap times, even in these early stages, we are seeing some very positive things. But over a race weekend there are also many negatives.

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"But like Alvaro said it is like putting all the pieces together, with the right track temperatures, with the right chassis, because we are sharing so many things. Many times one positive leads to some big negatives and we have never put everything together in the two races that we have had.”

Haslam was asked about the size of the window of operation of the new bike, but is unsure as they have not even gone into lots of potential new set-up and parameter territory yet. “We know certain areas of the bike we have not even looked at and normally if you change one mm here and two mm here and you can feel a difference.

"Now we can change the thing ten mm and it feels the same. We are not in the window in some areas, but we need to do this programme in a good way. It is difficult at the racetrack because in the morning you have a good feeling.

"In the afternoon you change nothing and you have a bad feeling. To try and test something from back-to-back is very difficult. Right now we are just trying to make a good feeling and a stable bike, because in the cooler morning it was a positive feeling. I would just like to find that feeling with a different track with a different tyre or setting.”

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