Leon Haslam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'Pocket Rocket' Leon Haslam, son of 'Rocket' Ron Haslam, is a motorcycle racer from Smalley, Derbyshire, England. He had raced in most of the significant British and international championships whilst still in his teens, spending the whole 2000 season with the underprepared ItalJet team in the 125cc world championship, then racing a 500cc Honda in 2001, and a 250cc Honda in 2002. He gained valuable experience from these years, but few top 10 finishes.
For 2003 Renegade Ducati signed him, and he did rounds of the British Supersport, British Superbike and World Superbike championships, adjusting quickly to all 3. For 2004 he did the full WSBK season for Renegade alongside Noriyuki Haga. He was 8th overall with a best of 3rd, but it would be unfair not to mention his impressive victory in a British Superbike race at Brands Hatch on one of the team's 3 ventures into the series. In torrential rain, this was the only Ducati win in the series all year, even though this was the title-winning bike in both 2003 (Shane "Shakey" Byrne) and 2005 (Gregorio Lavilla).
It was BSB full-time for Leon in 2005 with the GSE team, with the Airwaves Ducati team, finishing 4th overall behind only Lavilla and the two HM Plant Hondas of Ryuichi Kiyonari and Michael Rutter.
2006 saw Leon once again on the Airwave sponsored GSE Ducati 999, partnering Gregorio Lavilla. In the first 12 races of the 2006 season he finished 2nd no less than 8 times, without winning a race but taking 3 poles and lying 2nd overall.
He managed to push for the title all the way to the last race of the season at a rain soaked Brands Hatch where Leon, Lavilla and Kiyonari all had a chance to win. Leon was running second to Kiyo in the first race when it was stopped after Shane Byrne crashed heavily, and despite storming to victory in the second race, he ended the season in second place and Lavilla, who crashed in race one was third. Leon did however drive off in the £50,000 Audi convertible which was his prize for scoring the most points in the Audi pole position competition.
