Carlos Checa is determined to show he is not giving up his World Superbike Championship crown without a fight by targeting a double victory at Silverstone.
The Spaniard was the runaway winner of both races last season, one of five clean sweeps that propelled him to a dominant 2011
WSBK title win, but this year's campaign has proven to be less successful, Checa negating his four wins with five non-scores.
Having now not won a race since Miller Motorsports Park and now 67 points behind
Max Biaggi in the overall standings, Checa is eager to get back on top of the podium at
Silverstone to give him a fighting chance during the final quarter of the season.
“Last year's
Silverstone races couldn't have gone any better, I won both and that was the perfect conclusion to what was a great weekend. I like the track and I think we can do well there again this year.
“The weather conditions are always a total unknown in the UK but after the solid results that we scored in mixed conditions at Brno, I'm feeling confident ahead of Sunday's races.”
Althea Ducati team-mate Davide Giugliano, meanwhile, is hoping he can continue the front-running form he showed at Brno, even if the eventual results in the Czech Republic didn't reflect his undoubted upturn in pace.
“It was good to see that we had the pace to be up there with the frontrunners at Brno, even if the races then didn't go according to plan. We worked well in all of the practice sessions and so I hope that we can be equally competitive in the upcoming races, starting with Silverstone, a track that I know and enjoy racing at.”