“Not the perfect situation” for safety at “small” Balaton Park - Axel Bassani

Bimota WorldSBK rider Axel Bassani has questioned the safety of the Balaton Park circuit that will host the Hungarian WorldSBK this month.

Balaton, on 25–27 July, will return Hungary to the World Superbike calendar for the first time since the series visited the Hungaroring in 1990, but the circuit has received mixed reviews from riders in both the production derivative championship and MotoGP, which will race there on 22–24 August, after tests there at the end of June.

HRC MotoGP test rider Stefan Bradl, for example, was unhappy with the layout of the track, while KTM MotoGP test rider Pol Espargaro was more positive in his assessment of the circuit.

Axel Bassani was one of a number of WorldSBK riders to try the track in June on stock bikes.

“Balaton is quite small, not long straights,” Bassani said in an interview with Crash.net at the UK WorldSBK.

“It was quite hot, was like 42 degrees [Celsius] and the asphalt was 65 [Celsius].

“The asphalt was coming up everywhere, maybe because [it was] too new, too hot.

“But, in the end, I didn’t like a lot the track – too many small corners, all in first gear.

“So, honestly, it will be difficult, especially 24 riders all together in that track, it will be difficult to overtake. But we’ll see.

“After the weekend of the race we can say something about it.”

Bassani also expressed concerns about the safety of the Hungarian circuit; an aspect which, it should be noted, the aforementioned Espargaro felt was not a concern after he rode the track on the KTM MotoGP bike.

“About safety, it will be not the perfect situation, because a lot of walls are too near to the circuit, too [many] places where it’s dangerous and especially the first corner is really tight, it’s small,” he said.

“The first lap will be difficult, but we’ll see.

“We never raced there, and after the week of the race we can say what we think about it and we will see what happens, because before we say if it’s good or not good we have to race there and we’ll see what happens.”