“Same mindset” Haslam ready for BSB title tilt

Leon Haslam says he takes the same approach into the 2018 Bennetts British Superbike championship as last year when he narrowly missed out on the title at the final race.

The JG Speedfit Kawasaki rider suffered a cruel end to his 2017 BSB campaign when a broken brake lever forced him to crash out of the final race which enabled Shane Byrne to pick up enough points to take his sixth riders' title.

Haslam showed huge sportsmanship to congratulate Byrne at the season finale despite suffering a broken ankle and wrist and having recovered over the winter is fully focused on sealing a maiden BSB title.

With a year of experience at the Bournemouth-based JG Speedfit Kawasaki squad to lean upon, Haslam is relishing a title tilt after topping the second free practice session in chilly conditions at Donington Park ahead of the 2018 opener.

“I’m entering this year with the same mindset by trying to win as many races as we can and get the most out of what we got,” Haslam said. “The last two years we’ve done a good job and led championships into the last round.

“For me we are doing everything right and it is my second year with the team so we’ve learnt a lot and hope to smooth out a few issues we had last year so if we resolve them and build on what we had last year it should be good.

“We had a lot of small little mechanical issues that we’ve rectified and the bike has improved in areas we knew we needed. We’ve got all the data now from all the tracks so we will abstract that for set-up.”

The new BSB season has been hit by a schedule reshuffle due to the poor weather forecasts over the Easter weekend at the Leicestershire circuit with the first race of 2018 being shifted to Sunday afternoon while race two remains at the same time on Monday afternoon.

Haslam backs the schedule change decision with the hope for the best of conditions falling on the races after a mix of wet and windy weather during the two free practice sessions.

“The conditions have been the same for everyone with a mixture of the wet weather this morning which was good for us so we could get a few laps under our belt as the bike wasn’t working so well in the cold conditions,” he said. “It looks like it is going to be wet and cold all weekend so we needed to get it set up for the race. If it is dry I feel really confident as we had a really good winter but we need to find out what the conditions will be like for this weekend.

“We ripped a set of wets up at the end of the session as I wanted to post a half-decent time in case we use the times for the grid on race one. It was alright but we didn’t gather as much information because wet tyres on a dry track don’t really go.

“It [the schedule change] scrubs out some of the free practice time but it gives a better chance for better weather for the two races. Monday looks really bad up until lunchtime so it is good to keep the race in the afternoon and hopefully we’ll get a half-decent race on Sunday.”