BSB: Haslam plagued by ECU issues on opening days

Leon Haslam faced a difficult opening day to the MCE British Superbike Championship title decider at Brands Hatch with a number of electronic issues limiting his time on track.

While title rival Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne topped the day’s second session, Haslam was only able to complete a handful of laps as he was plagued by issues with his Motec ECU through both free practice sessions. 

A slight improvement towards the end of Free Practice 2 saw him jump to second on the timesheets before dropping to fifth in the closing moments.  

“We’ve not been able to get the bike to run and work as it should today,” he told MCN after the session. “We made a little bit of progress in the last five minutes, the lap time came quite comfortably and even though I didn’t get a clear lap I was only a couple of tenths off.

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“The pace and the feeling is there but it’s been a hard day and we haven’t had many laps on track due to problems with the Motec ECU. We put one ECU in and the engine didn’t even start, and then another which just keeps cutting out as if I’m hitting the kill switch. The fuelling and mapping changes completely depending on which ECU we put in which is strange as they are supposed to be the same.

“It’s frustrating as I want to do long runs and be more prepared and when you have issues like this you can’t do that. I’m not worried about my pace but I want to prepare the best I can. To be two tenths off with the issues we’ve had I’m happy but at the same time it would have been nice to do a few more longer runs to find our way.” 

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