Leon Haslam blamed a wrong direction in set-up for his failure to get on the podium in the latest round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at
Oulton Park.
Still searching for his first win on the HM Plant Honda, Haslam qualified well in fourth and ran comfortably with the frontrunners, but rarely looked as though he could challenge for victory.
Indeed, while Haslam was pleased with the progress made over the course of the weekend, he was frustrated not to extract the maximum from his machine, particularly in the second race when he briefly led at the start.
"I'm disappointed about today's results but I'm looking at the positive side of things," he said. "In the second race we were running a second a lap quicker and made some massive improvements, but we were still lacking out of two very important corners: Hizzy's and Druids.
"I was trying to make passing moves, but to be fair I chose the wrong tyre and struggled a little with grip. Then I made a mistake, which dropped me out of third. In the first race I didn't have the right set-up really."
Haslam will now be chasing a better result when he makes the trip to Japan for the Suzuka 8 Hours endurance race, along with HM Plant team-mate cal Crutchlow.
"It was a tough weekend and not the best we could have had, but tomorrow I head to Suzuka and the Eight-Hour race," he said. "I've not had as much practice as I would like for that, but it's a long race and I'm looking forward to it."
