Haslam determined to bounce back from 'worst injury'
Leon Haslam says he is focused on getting back to full fitness in time for the 2014 World Superbike Championship after a 2013 campaign hampered by 'the worst injury' of his career.
The 2010 WSBK runner-up switched to Pata Honda for the 2013 season after two years with BMW, but after a pre-season struggling to get to grips with a troublesome new electronics package, a fall during the third round at Assen would leave Haslam nursing a broken leg.
Though the accident itself was fairly innocuous, the severity of the injury - where Haslam's leg got caught up in the falling bike - would leave its effect for the remainder of the season.
As such, though Haslam was back on the bike just two rounds later at Donington Park, it would take until round seven for him to finish another race.
"After breaking my leg I was keen to bounce back as quickly as possible as I have always be able to overcome all the injuries I have had in the past," he said." But honestly this has been by far the worse injury I've had, not so much with the break of the bones, but with all the soft-tissue damage and the lack of power that I had in the leg.
"It has been really hard to mix racing with the recovery as my injury definitely had an effect on how I was able to ride the bike. It's been made a bit more difficult because this year was more about learning about the new components that were being used on the bike and gathering as much data as possible."
Ending the season with a best finish of just seventh place to his name, the Briton did nonetheless win the prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours endurance event alongside Michael van der Mark and Takumi Takahashi in 2013 and has duly earned himself a contract extension for 2014. With this in mind, Haslam is confident he can start afresh next year.
"My first priority is to get properly fit and really concentrate on these upcoming tests to create a stable working machine. Hopefully that will give us a really fresh start to 2014 because I still feel very confident that we can be at the pointy end where we belong."
