After a rotten stretch of luck prior to the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season opener, which saw both of Honda HRC’s new rookie riders pick up injuries, both riders are now showing promising signs of recovery. They were unfortunately unable to compete at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, which would have been their WorldSBK debut round.

Prior to the weekend’s Australian Round, with his teammate injured, Jake Dixon was getting set up to ride alongside Chantra’s replacement rider, Tetsuta Nagashima, who normally participates for the test team; unfortunately, however, Dixon crashed at Turn 11 in FP1 of Day 2 of the Official Australia Test. He was taken to the medical centre where he was diagnosed with a fractured left wrist and an elbow contusion. The #96 underwent a successful surgical procedure in Melbourne and will return to Europe to start on his physical therapy in the coming days.

In a video posted on social media in good spirits and walking around in Melbourne, Australia on February 26^th, Dixon gave his fans an update on how he’s faring. Dixon said: “I’m still in Melbourne; I had surgery here. I could have waited to get back to the UK to do it, but I would have been waiting until today to get the surgery. My doctors and I in the UK all decided that we would do the surgery here because it looked like we needed to do it now. Things are going pretty well apart from being in quite a lot of pain. I can’t do any training, so the next best thing I can do is walk. The last few days, I’ve been walking like 20K because I can’t do anything else. I’m just trying to keep positive and on the go. I come back to Europe next week to see my doctors in the UK, and they’ll give me a further update, then I want to get back to Andorra so I can start my rehab. For these first two weeks, however, it’s essentially a healing game for my scars and everything because they’re just worried about making sure it doesn't get infected. This is just a minor blip, just a road bump that won’t define who I am. I will come back stronger from this. I still have to do some winning in WorldSBK, so it’ll take more than this to knock me down.”

Somkiat Chantra suffered a training injury while riding on a stock Honda CBR1000RR-R SP Fireblade in Malaysia and underwent surgery on January 17^th and unfortunately he was not yet fully recovered in time for Round 1. Chantra is hoping to be back in action by March 27^th for the beginning of the Pirelli Portuguese Round’s weekend action, and in that pursuit, he was seen training with a stock bike in a photo published by the team.

The pair will hope to be in fighting shape by March 27^th for the beginning of the weekend’s action! Don’t miss a moment of the action to come with the WorldSBK VideoPass!