Leandro Mercado - Photo Credit: Team Pedercini
Leandro Mercado used the wet conditions to his advantage at Assen, finishing tenth in race one to claim his best World Superbike result so far. The Argentinian was racing in such conditions for the first time in SBK and admitted that he purposefully took it easy to gain the result.
“In race one I was able to reach the same good results that I obtained in Imola and in race two I closed in fifteenth position. I think we took two good results considering the very difficult conditions in the first race. It was my first race with a Superbike on a wet track and so was really difficult. I saw a lot of riders crash and I preferred not to take risks and end the race. Race two was easier but on the dry track my bike set up was not good enough to allow me to reach a better result.”
Mercado also scored points for 15th in race two while Team Pedercini colleague David Salom completed a satisfactory weekend for the Italian squad by doing the same. The Spaniard was 13th in race one before going one better in race two and feels he could've done even better without some minor problems on his Kawasaki ZX-10R.
“I'm satisfied with today's results but I'm not happy with the performance of my bike. I struggled due to lack of grip in both races and in race two I felt a lot of vibration coming from the engine. I was forced to reduce my rhythm and I lost some positions as a result. I know we still have a lot of work to do but I'm sure my team will work hard to solve our problems”.
