Kennedy bags another podium and Bridewell powers his Fireblade to fourth
Oulton ParkHonda Racing UK take home more silverware in Supersport and just miss out on the Superbike podium.
Glorious sunshine baked the tarmac of Oulton Park as a Sunday schedule packed with qualifying and opening races took place. Having placed himself well within the top twelve fastest times across the Free Practice sessions a day previously, Tommy Bridewell left himself with work to do in the opening Bennetts British Superbike race of the weekend with a qualifying lap quick enough for eighth on the grid. Meanwhile, after narrowly missing out on progressing through Qualifying 1, teammates Dean Harrison and Andrew Irwin found themselves sixteenth and seventeenth on the grid respectively.
Nonetheless, all were undeterred by their frustrating qualifying sessions as the lights went out and they roared away from the grid towards Old Hall. Ever the racer and never afraid to get his elbows out Tommy was able to hold his position in the early fight for the top ten. Come lap six, he was up into sixth position and desperate to reel in the train of riders ahead. A flurry of fast laps followed and with a brilliant overtaking manoeuvre on Danny Kent, Tommy was into fifth and reeling in the OMG pair of Vickers and Ryde.
By two-thirds distance, eager to continue his assault up the finishing order Tommy made yet another inch-perfect pass to scythe past Ryan Vickers into fourth and hot on the heels of Kyle Ryde ahead in the final podium position. At this point the gap to Ryde ahead was over a second and just four laps remained.
Despite a valiant effort to bridge that gap, Tommy crossed the finish line in fourth position and just half a second away from a debut podium in Honda colours. Nevertheless, he takes all of the positives from a hugely competitive day, not least a fourth-place grid slot for tomorrow’s opening race.
In a race for the final point-scoring position, Dean Harrison emerged victorious over his teammate in a last-lap battle for fifteenth. Both he and Andrew will be hoping for more on Monday however in what is an extremely tight midfield fight.
On his CBR600RR, Jack Kennedy converted his front row grid position into a third palace finish and another podium for the team after a race-long battle with the larger capacity machines of Ben Currie and Luke Stapleford. The three were effectively in a race of their own at the front of the field pulling away and with nothing between them as the three lapped under the Supersport lap record. With pace as hot as this Jack looks to capitalise on an improved starting position of second in tomorrow's race.
In Superstock, John McGuinness MBE targets a point scoring finish in his only race of the weekend tomorrow after setting his quickest ever lap at Oulton Park. He will line up on the grid in seventeenth.
Action kicks off tomorrow with the opening BSB race of the day scheduled for 13.15.
Qualifying was a little difficult to tell the truth because we had to go straight into setting a lap time after being off the bike since yesterday. I prefer to build into it and then have a bit of a time attack after. I think we went a little bit the wrong way in Qualifying, but ultimately it was enough for the top eight, and I can work from there. The race was a bit of a challenge because when you are starting eighth it’s a bit of a dog-fight. I held my own off the line but I had a fair few riders to pass as I was coming through. I knew that I had to be patient and the race slowly came back to me. I was hanging on to the front guys and I am really happy with the way I rode and the way the bike performed. For my second full distance race I can't be disappointed with fighting for the podium and coming home in fourth. We have the sprint tomorrow and another longer distance race so we will look to make a step overnight and fight for that first podium.
As a whole I think it went reasonably well, albeit the start wasn’t the best as I haven’t quite got the hang of the start procedure with the lights on the dash. So we will definitely have a look at that and put something in place for tomorrow which will help us get away from the line a little bit better which will then help with the early parts of the race. The mid part of the race was pretty good and I could hang in there with Andrew and some of the others around fifteenth. Ahead of us though there was another group but they had just managed to gap us, which was frustrating as I just couldn’t quite get to them. The times between us in that little battle are super tight, so hopefully we can find a little something and move further forward tomorrow.
It isn’t coming so easy at the moment. There are a few things that I need to work on and maybe sometimes I need to remember where I was twelve months ago. There are still some limitations with my arm but I think we can work on that and make a step tomorrow. Honestly, on the bike I don’t feel too bad, the bike and the team are working well, I just need to do some work physically and put things together tomorrow. We have two races to have another go at it.