Hickman headed to Donington Park for Round 3 in the British Superbike championship after a mixed bag at the North West 200, however setting up the brand new 2023 BMW M 1000 RR for the new surface proved a sticking point for Hicky and the team.
The weather for once was consistent and Hicky managed a 1:28.980 during FP1. In the FP2 session, he left it until the last lap to secure a spot in Supepole the following day with a 1:28.699 on lap 13.
In Superpole qualifying, Hicky recorded a time of 1:28.424 giving him a starting place of P12 for Race One and a lot of work to do.
Race One 12 laps
A ‘row 4’ start for Hicky alongside Vickers and teammate Brookes. Getting an ok start, he found himself jostling for position with Buchan and Stacey. On lap 5 he managed to get by Danny but was struggling to close the gap to the riders ahead.
On the last lap, Hickman caught and passed O’Halloran, but the pair touched on the run-up to Starky’s putting Jason onto the grass and Hicky was given a 2-second time penalty, dropping him back to a P13 finish.
Hickys fastest lap was 1:28.621 on lap 6
Race Two 20 laps
Another P12 start, with another tough battle ahead, alongside Andrew Irwin and Stacey, with Brookes and Jackson in front.
Hicky found himself fighting with Kennedy and Iddon, breaking away with Glenn Irwin in front. Irwin went down on lap 5, opening a bit of space to hopefully give Hicky a chance to break away from his P11 position.
Kyle Ryde went down in the leading group on lap 12 and the safety car came out causing the riders to bunch back up. Worn tyres were also going to come into play in these later stages of the race.
The safety car went in on lap 15 and Hicky made the most of the situation getting himself through to cross the line in P7.
Hicky’s fastest lap was1:28.883 on lap 7
Race Three 20 laps
Starting further back down the grid in P18 Hicky had his work cut out to move up the field. After 6 laps he was up behind his teammate Brookes in P13, but it took him until lap 16 to get past and chase after Kennedy. Hicky closed the gap over the next couple of laps putting the pressure on, lap 19 and Jack ran deep into the Melbourne Loop opening the door and allowing Peter to move up into 11th.
Hickys fastest lap was 1:28.712 on lap 13
Peter Hickman:
“This weekend hasn’t turned out the way we expected to be honest. The new surface is awesome and it’s really grippy, which normally for us and the BMW is a good thing but this weekend it seems to have done the complete opposite for some reason and to be totally honest none of us really know why.
We’ve not really moved forward all weekend from the first session; the bike doesn’t feel bad and yet we’re just not fast, and we don’t know why.
To be at least in the fight we needed between half a second to 0.7s and I don’t know where I could have found it, I was too far away, especially on the early laps I couldn’t go as fast as everyone else.
From half distance onwards, I’m similar, only actually 0.3s away from the other guys, we’re just not really getting the speed we need.
We do have positives from the weekend; we finished all three races, we got points in all three races and Josh got a podium, and from here we go to the Isle of Man!”
Hicky
A DONINGTON DISAPPOINTMENT