Leon Haslam's third place in the second race of the opening round of the FIM Superbike World Championship came as something of a surprise to the rider but he intends to make the most of his elevated position in the championship standings.
The Stiggy Motorsport Honda rider backed up his sixth place first time out at Phillip Island with third in the second outing to lie third in the standings behind Nori Haga and Max Neukirchner.
He now hopes to make the most of his good start to the season even if that has put Haslam in the frame as one of the early pacesetters even ahead of his own predictions.
Haslam said: "In terms of my own ambitions, well, this is not my year to challenge for the championship or race wins really. The team is completely new as is the challenge for myself.
"I'm certain we can challenge for the world title in 2010 and regular race wins but, having said that, if there's an opportunity to win I'm not going to turn it down."
Haslam continues his debut World Superbike season at the Losail circuit in Qatar which stages the second round on Saturday.
Haslam added: "The Losail track offers a completely different challenge for myself and the Stiggy Honda team.
"I was fortunate enough to get some practice around the track in Qatar when Honda invited me to the launch of their new road-going machine at the end of last year. I've never raced there before so that track time was really valuable.
"The biggest improvement we need from our machine is top speed. Qatar has a very long start and finish straight and I know from Phillip Island that we were about 5-6kph down on where we needed to be.
"But the engine development company in Italy are aware of that and they have made some improvements which should at least see me closer to a top speed that I need."
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Haslam looking to build on strong start
