BSB: Haslam: 'I had no grip from lap one!'

Leon Haslam was left frustrated after a significant lack of rear grip saw him drop back through the field during today’s opening Bennetts British Superbike race.

Haslam got an ideal start from pole position to fight at the front with James Ellison and Bradley Ray but it didn’t take long until the JG Speedfit Kawasaki rider was missing apexes and struggling to hold his line.

Falling back through the pack, Haslam crossed the line in a disappointing ninth place after being unable to replicate his earlier qualifying pace.

While his rear tyre was in visibly bad shape, he refused to lay the blame solely with the tyre given the team were yet to conduct their post-race analysis.

“I just had no grip from lap one,” he told MCN. “I was two and a half seconds a lap slower than the times

“I’ve been doing all weekend. We need to analyse what it was, it’s easy to blame the tyre, it might be something on the rear of the bike. It’s just frustrating as I felt I had a lot in hand today and it ended up being a long race.

“The fastest lap of the race was a 1’29.9 and I did a 20-lap run in the 1’29s earlier on the same spec tyre with the same settings so it’s incredibly frustrating. We need to understand what it was, but we’ll regroup and come back for what looks like it’s going to be a wet one tomorrow.”