Hickman cures ‘gremlins’ for Assen turnaround

Peter Hickman has put his Assen recovery down to ‘tireless’ work by his Smiths Racing BMW squad to solve technical issues with his bike suffered at the opening Bennetts British Superbike Showdown round and is targeting a final flourish with third place in the riders’ championship.

The BSB Showdown contender effectively saw his title hopes dashed in the opening weekend of the three-round finale with poor results at Oulton Park caused by technical problems with his BMW S1000RR.

Both Hickman and his Smiths Racing squad worked on finding solutions to the issues which saw his front-running pace return at Assen with fourth place in race one, narrowly missing the podium due to a late mistake, followed by an impressive podium in race two having led the opening stages.

Hickman says the Assen turnaround was triggered by the development work from his team, along with a private test at Cadwell Park before the Dutch round, and feels he can target third in the championship at the Brands Hatch finale.

“We seem to have sorted out all the gremlins we had at Oulton Park where the bike was almost un-ridable,” Hickman said. “The team has worked tireless over the two weeks between there and here with endless hours on the dyno and we even did a little test at Cadwell Park.

“We managed to iron out all those gremlins and the bike has been working well all weekend.  

“I had my usual rubbish qualifying session, but I made a great start in race one and showed we had the pace to win at Assen. A small mistake from me at the end meant we just missed out on the podium, but it was great to be back at the head of the field where we should be.

“It was great to start race two from pole position and I made the perfect start, but the safety car period hurt us a bit as the tyres cooled off a bit too much.

“The tyre was chattering a lot in the last six laps as I’d spun it on the rim when I was trying to generate some heat, but it was great to be back on the podium and we’re well in contention for third place in the championship.”

Hickman is currently fifth in the BSB Showdown standings but closed up to eight points behind third-place rider Josh Brookes with Glenn Irwin splitting the pair just five points in front of the Smiths Racing BMW rider.