Michael Leon

The Bad

Team Royal Distributing/MBP Superbike Team attended the 2nd round of the Race Superseries, held at Shannonville May 14-16.  Friday practice and Saturday qualifying were difficult as the team’s Ducati 1198S began to expose an evil handling personality on Shannonville’s Long Track.  In the faster sections of the track, the bike was unpredictable and would often go into a high speed wobble after setting the front wheel back down from small acceleration wheelies

These symptoms had not been as severe on the lower speed Nelson Track at Rd1, two weeks prior.  Tuners Guy Martin and Carlos Carrascosa, along with rider Michael Leon, worked closely with John Sharrard of Accelerated Technologies and Sandy Noce of Pro6Cycle/Dunlop to cure the problems.  The bike’s steering damper broke during Saturday practice, indicating that there was a bigger problem than the simple suspension setup issues. Read more…

Michael Leon won both the Liquid Thunder and Heavyweight Sportsman races riding the Royal Distributing / MBP Superbike at the opening round of the RACE Superseries, held May 2^nd.  In the feature Superbike event, he rode to a 4^th place finish.  The 2009 Ducati 1198S motorcycle arrived from a California salvage yard just 8 days earlier and was transformed into a race bike by Guy Martin of MBP.  The Ducati was equipped with Dunlop tires from Pro 6 Cycle. The team plans to compete in the remaining rounds of the series, with the main focus being the Superbike class. Read more…