Peter Hickman making progress... but not as fast as he would like

Snetterton turned out to be another tough weekend for Lincolnshire rider Peter Hickman as he suffered some technical issues with the Global Robots Smiths Racing BMW.

Hickman was contesting the three race British Superbike championship second round at the 1.9 mile Norfolk circuit where he finished 13th and 11th in the first two races and retired from race three with a technical problem.

After completing his qualifying in 13th position he began the first race on Saturday from a fifth row grid position and as the race unfolded he moved up a place to 12th.

But he was unable to out brake other riders and ended the 14 lap race in 13th place to pick up three championship points.

Race two on Sunday went a little better for the Lincolnshire rider who started the first 16 lap affair from the fifth row.

He fought his way through the midfielders to take up 11th position on lap 14 which he held to the flag, this time picking up five championship points.

In the final race Hickman started from the sixth row in 18th position and was riding well.

He moved through the field to 12th on lap five but once again the bike developed a technical problem which forced him to retire on lap 10.

Hickman explained: “Overall it feels like we’ve been battling bike set-up all weekend, but we have made progress and every time I’ve gone out on the bike we have been able to take a step forward – if we could start again from the first free practice session now with the bike at its current state I would be confident of some good results!

"It’s definitely been frustrating but everyone has worked tirelessly and the team has really progressed the chassis a lot.

“We’ve got a couple of weeks now until the next round, so hopefully some of the things that we have learnt this weekend can be transferred to Silverstone and we can hit the ground running.”

With the eight championship points accrued from Snetterton, Hickman is placed 14th in the rider standings on 17 points and he will be seeking three good results from Silverstone in the next round which takes place over the weekend of September 4-6 to move him nearer to or into the top 10.