A Rider to Watch - Martin Cardenas
The 27 year-old from Medellin in Colombia already has a bit of an international background. He did a few races in AMA before moving to Europe in 2002 to race in Spain's CEV national series and then made his debut in the 250cc World Championship class in 2005 with teammate Chaz Davies in the Aprilia Germany team. 2006 saw Martin start with the private Wurth Honda BQR team, but he was moved into the factory Repsol Honda team when fellow South American Sebastian Porto retired. Unfortunately, Cardenas crashed during the first race weekend and broke his collarbone. Since then he has raced in AMA, but for the final round of the 2009 Supersport World Championship at Portimao, with the help of Paolo Guintini of GMG Management he managed to secure himself a ride with the Veidec Racing RES Software team on a Honda CBR600RR.
WorldSBK.com caught up with Martin Cardenas at Portimao for a chat to see how things were progressing and to check on whether or not he has any plans to race in the championship in the future.
"This year was very good in AMA, I finished 3rd in Supersport 600 , which over there is called the Daytona Sportbike category. I have an arrangement to ride this weekend here with the Veidec team and we are here trying to do as good as possible. So far it's going OK, I think we've made progress and I have been trying to adapt to the bike, the new track, new things. Supersport is very competitive, all the riders are very fast, I'm just trying to do the best I can. We'll see how it goes this weekend, but I'm not sure about my future at the moment."
Cardenas qualified 15th and finished a respectable 12th on the Veidec Honda in the race, at a circuit he had never even seen before.
