Image: Foremost Media.

The wrist strength of Unitech Racing’s Arthur Sissis is still an issue at round five of the 2023 Mi-Bike Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), with the South Australian battling complications from an incident earlier in the year.

Sissis fell while testing prior to the Queensland Raceway round in April, breaking his wrist which ruled him out of the third stop on this year’s calendar.

He returned at Hidden Valley, with FP1 in Darwin marking the first time he had ridden the R1 since the incident. The South Australian completed the weekend with 7-8-7 finishes, notably suffering over longer stints.

With a month since round four, Sissis has revealed that his wrist is still not 100 percent and is experiencing a lack of strength around arguably one of the most physically demanding circuits on the calendar.

“It still feels the same,” Sissis said to CycleOnline.”It doesn’t feel like the bone is a problem, it hurts on the opposite side on my hand to where I broke it.

“They only did an x-ray, I’m not sure if I did any ligaments or anything. It’s been three months, so I would have thought a little broken bone would have been alright by now.

“It just gets weak. I’ve got no strength in it. I can’t even put my glove on. As soon as I come in from the session I can’t take my glove off or put it on. I go to Mark [at Racesafe] and he puts the bandage on. It doesn’t hurt that much, but it’s just weak. I’m not making an excuse, like I’m still slow over one lap compared to the front guys.”

Sissis completed FP4 this morning eighth fastest, with his quickest time of the session, a 1m13.549s, placing him 0.931s from pace-setter Mike Jones (Yamaha Racing Team).

“Yesterday was a bit slow, but today we changed something on the bike last night and it worked a bit better then, so hopefully for qualifying we can make a step,” Sissis added. “Like low 13s, high 12s I think we can do, that’s my aim anyway.”