Canepa aiming for Thai return

Niccolo Canepa is aiming for a Thailand return to the World Superbike series on a month’s time, after falling out of race one at Phillip Island last weekend and heavily injuring his left foot.

The former Ducati test rider qualified sixteenth for his first race on the Team Hero EBR machine, and was running in a strong points scoring position when a technical problem with the unconventional American manufactured superbike caused him to crash out.

“The tendon in my left ankle is seems broken, maybe 99% sure. We have to check after five days when the swelling goes down. It is really hurting right now but the doctors say there is no evidence that the bone is broken, so that is good, but I feel it may be. There was a technical issue and between the first and second corner I crashed. We will have to see what happened later. We are lucky because there is one month from here to Thailand so we can get 100% ready.”

However, the weekend wasn’t a total disaster, with team boss and rider Larry Pegram taking the bike to a pair of fourteenth placed finishes; the official team’s first points despite competing in the series for all of 2014.