Ducati dominate emotion charged Oulton Park BSB round

2023 British Superbike Championship
Round Nine – Oulton Park

Images by David Yeomans Photography

Summary

The BeerMonster Ducati team celebrated an emotionally charged treble victory at Oulton Park at an intense opening round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship Showdown with just half a point now separating Glenn Irwin and Tommy Bridewell ahead of the penultimate round at Donington Park in two weeks time.

Irwin had kicked off the weekend with a victory in Saturday’s BikeSocial Sprint Race, dedicating the win to Team Owner Paul Bird who sadly passed away earlier this month, as the BeerMonster Ducati team-mates fight to secure PBM’s ninth title at Brands Hatch in October.

Superbike Race Two

Glenn Irwin was awarded the second Bennetts British Superbike Championship race win at Oulton Park after his BeerMonster Ducati team-mate Tommy Bridewell was penalised for unsafe conduct under the Safety Car, dropping him to sixth place.

Bridewell had been leading the race from the start ahead of Irwin and Kyle Ryde, but on the second lap, Irwin made a move into Lodge to head the pack.

His BeerMonster Ducati team-mate was waiting to strike and he recaptured the advantage when Irwin made a small error on the exit of Knickerbrook and went wide. Bridewell then held the advantage until lap 14 when Storm Stacey crashed out and the BMW Safety Car was deployed.

On the restart, Bridewell concertinaed the pack, forcing several riders to take evasive action to avoid crashing and he was issued a long lap penalty for unsafe conduct under the Safety Car.

Bridewell crossed the line just ahead of Irwin, but his time penalty dropped him to sixth place in the final result as BeerMonster Ducati claimed a second victory of the weekend with Irwin.

The penalty promoted Jackson into second place as he claimed his second podium finish of the weekend just ahead of Ryde on the LAMI OMG Racing Yamaha.

Haslam had been in the leading pack earlier in the race, holding fourth place in the final result ahead of Josh Brookes and Bridewell following his penalty.

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Christian Iddon was seventh for the Oxford Products Racing Ducati team ahead of Jason O’Halloran and Ryan Vickers with Peter Hickman completing the top ten.

Brayden Elliott stepped up from the Superstock category to make his Superbike debut with DAO Kawasaki. Elliott crossed the line in 19th place just behind Hector Barbera.

Superbike Race Two Results

Superbike Race Three

When the final Superbike race of the round got underway Tommy Bridewell launched into the lead ahead of Irwin, Leon Haslam, Kyle Ryde and Lee Jackson. The BeerMonster Ducati riders then traded places as Irwin grabbed the advantage on the brakes into Lodge on lap five.

Bridewell wasn’t going to settle for second though and he made a pass back at Old Hall three laps later, but Irwin repeated his earlier overtake at Lodge to regain the lead. The pair then crossed the line side-by-side as Bridewell edged ahead to start lap nine back at the front of the field.

Bridewell then held off Irwin and edged a gap just ahead of the chequered flag to take the race three victory on an emotional weekend for the entire PBM Team by 1.147s, with the BeerMonster Ducati team taking a 1-2.

Bridewell’s 14.5-point lead before the Showdown has been decimated and Irwin now leads by 0.5 points with just six races remaining.

Jackson added to his podium tally with a strong third place on the Cheshire Mouldings Kawasaki ahead of Leon Haslam and Josh Brookes, as BMW riders completed the top five positions.

Ryde dropped to sixth place, but maintained his position ahead of Christian Iddon, Ryan Vickers and Jason O’Halloran with Storm Stacey rebounding from his earlier crash to finish in the top ten.

Brayden Elliott crashed out of the final bout, as did Michael Dunlop, among others.

Superbike Race Three Results

Glenn Irwin

“I couldn’t have expected any more from the weekend and with two wins and a second, it’s been unbelievable. There was obviously a lot of emotion, but everyone handled it well and put on a show and it pleases me how hard the guys worked and how I rode all weekend. To come back from 34 points adrift a few races ago to be in the lead is really good especially as I’ve had one additional DNF but hats off to Tommy in the final race. He rode perfectly in the final laps and when I saw +0.8 on my board, I settled for second and 22 points so with two wins and a second, it’s a great start to the final three rounds. I never expected to pull 15 points back this weekend and I have a lot to be grateful for.”

Tommy Bridewell

“It’s been a tough weekend, not just for me but for the whole team and PBM Podiumeveryone involved, and it’s been lovely to see the deserved tributes from the BSB paddock to Paul. I felt like I deserved two wins today and didn’t think I’d done anything to deserve a penalty, but I accept it and although I lost some points to Glenn I’m not overly concerned as I know how strong we’ll be at Donington and Brands Hatch. Having said that, it was nice to respond with the victory in the final race and whenever I wanted to, I could drop into the low 34s and when I did, my lead increased. Glenn was riding well all weekend and it’s very much ‘game on’ in the championship and that win is dedicated to Paul.”

Josh Brookes

“We scored three fifths this weekend, which is an improvement on previous rounds; I wasn’t even going to be greedy, I was hoping for a podium this weekend rather than a win! The three fifth places are the best we could achieve, the last race was strong and I stayed close to the lead group for the longest period of time, but we’re still missing a couple of tenths, and we have to be realistic that the lap times I’m able to do aren’t good enough to rival the podium. We have got to keep our heads down, keep working away and improving, I think coming to a track we’ve been to already this season meant we didn’t have to make adjustments, we just set the bike up the way it was before and focused on the electronics. People forget we’ve got a new bike this year, so every time we go to a new track none of the information we have from years before is valuable, and in fact it does us an injustice as those settings compromise our progress because the bike is different now. I think people just assume you’re going to go to the next round and pick up where you expect and it’s proven not to be like that, as we’ve had a lot of work to do. But I think coming back to a circuit we’ve been to before has boosted our results and the next two rounds we’ve also been to before, which I anticipate to work in our favour.”

Peter Hickman

“The weekend started off positive, we were fifth in FP1 and eighth fastest overall, we’ve come off the back of some tough rounds and we were looking to be somewhere in the mix at the start. Qualifying it all went a bit wrong, we had a mechanical on the first flying lap and ended up 18th on the grid yesterday for Race 1 as we didn’t secure a lap time, which wasn’t an ideal situation. However, I managed to get a good start and ended up ninth, so I was quite happy about that. We made a little change for today’s first race, but I think we went the wrong way as it made the bike hard to ride and I struggled to be honest, and it meant I finished 10th, so went backwards from my grid position. The last race wasn’t the result we wanted and we’d made quite a radical change, almost we have nothing to lose so lets try something and see if we can improve. All we need to do is improve where we’ve been struggling and we’re not a million miles away, we’ve made a step forward this weekend, but we just need another step. Josh is nearly there he’s made a good step, I’m nearly there, just a couple of tenths a lap off, which is next to nothing. The last race was the worst result of the weekend, but I was more consistent; the BMW felt much better, and I think with a better starting position we could have actually been much more in the mix.”

Jason O’Halloran

“It’s been a difficult weekend really. It’s not ideal but I did the best job I could – we’ve just been lacking something and no matter what we did we couldn’t improve the feeling. I finished all the races which is positive, so we’ll go through everything and try to understand. Donington is a different track compared to Oulton, so hopefully we can turn up there in a different place, reset after this weekend and go again.”

British Superbike Championship Points

The next round of the BSB series takes place at Donington Park, October 1