"This left me with a difficult decision as to the best way forward - either stay with DFX for the spread out three Italian races and compromise a potential full time ride for the rest of the season, or leave and chance not riding at all,” he explained.
"When Kevin Curtain asked me to stand in for him on the Yamaha in the World Supersport Championship at Assen it was a good and timely opportunity. I could have continued on the Yamaha at the following round at Monza, but thought I should try and do the right thing by everyone - my chief mechanic as the last remaining member of my bike crew, the DFX team and also to continue to fulfill my contractual obligations and agreements that I had made with the team - and get back on the DFX Honda again at Monza."
Despite having made some good progress with system and component development on the Honda CBR1000 machine during recent testing, these improvements have never come to fruition with being installed in Steve's race bikes due to lack of funds.
This, coupled with Martin not being favoured with attending all of the team's testing days, has understandably created both frustration and ongoing bike performance challenges for the Aussie. And further demonstrating that the team are not serious about running Martin competitively, is him having to sit out a two day test this week at the new and revised Misano circuit - a round where DFX expected Martin to race the Honda.
Martin explained, "My contract states that both riders in the team must be provided with exactly the same machinery, parts, systems and technical treatment. But this hasn't been the case by a long way for the most part of the season to date, so I've been fighting an uphill battle going into every race to even try and make the bike competitive against my team-mate, let alone the rest of the field.
"As a rider, and to be competitive, you need to be able to concentrate and focus on training, riding and developing a bike and I've done my best to do this with DFX in what has been a difficult and unsettling situation over the last few months.
