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Since the Misano round of the Superstock 600 season in June, World Superbike rider David Salom has taken on the joint role of rider/team manager.

At the Riviera di Rimini round, the Mallorcan debuted his DS Junior Team in the smaller of the two Superstock categories. Following a difficult start but a lengthy summer break, the outfit scored its first points in Jerez last Sunday as the team’s sole rider, Ilya Mikhalchik of Ukraine, finished 12th to achieve four points.

“It’s very good!” smiles Salom, owner of the DS Junior Team and rider for Team Pedercini in World Superbike. “I have a very good rider. We started at Misano, but we had too many problems with the bike. We have worked very hard over the last three months and I’m happy about this. I don’t know whether Magny-Cours will be better or not, but the feeling is very good, the rider has a very good feeling with the bike and team and we will be able to improve further for next year.”

The rider in question – Ilya Mikhalchik – has already started 13 races in the Superstock 600 category, having raced for Go Eleven last year plus four races earlier this season. On no less than three occasions has he finished races in the top five.

“It was a bit of a difficult race,” 19-year-old Mikhalchik says of his latest outing at Jerez. “The weekend didn’t start so perfectly, but in second practice I felt more comfortable with the bike. I ended up starting from 23rd position, which was really bad for me because last year I had always started around the top ten.

"In Jerez, I had a problem with the bike in the middle of the qualifying session and at Misano I had a really big crash in first practice. I had two tests at the Circuit of Majorca before we went to Jerez; I didn’t feel very comfortable with the bike in the tests and I thought Jerez would be really difficult to fight for the top ten, but I’m happy to take points.”

Mikhalchik may be lacking of a team-mate with whom to share data, but looks forward to the upcoming round in France with good reason.

 “Many teams have two riders and some have two very fast riders,” he continues. “If you are a little slower than your team-mate, he can help to go faster…you can follow him and so on. At the moment, we get to tracks and we don’t have base setups for sprockets, suspension and things like that, but we are improving. I now feel very comfortable on the bike and hope to be in the top five at Magny-Cours.”

Magny-Cours 2012 saw Mikhalchik clinch his best race result thus far since joining the WorldSBK paddock, when he finished second in the European Junior Cup race.