Silverstone – Round 1

It was the opening round of the British Superbike Championship this weekend for Tommy Bridewell and the Oxford Products Ducati Racing team at Silverstone Circuit. It was a solid start to the opening round and Tommy secured a seventh, eighth and a seventh in the three races.

It was a challenging weekend for the team as they struggled with set-up and tyre wear especially in the two longer races on Sunday. It has never been their strongest track and it is good now to be able to move on to some tracks that are more suited to Tommy and the Ducati.

Everyone worked extremely hard over the weekend and to leave in eighth position in the Championship standings is not a bad start to the Championship campaign. It is a very long season; it is important to pace ourselves and continue to get consistent Championship points.

Tommy had good practice and qualifying sessions and started the opening race on Saturday from fourth place on the grid. It’s hard to pass at Silverstone and only one main racing line but he got a reasonable start and was riding well but just lost rear grip from around the halfway point in the race, he slipped back to finish in seventh.

He was back in eighth for the second race on Sunday and the team made some overnight changes to help his progress. The races on Sunday were longer and his initial lap times were strong but once again struggled in the closing stages and had to settle for eighth place.

A big bold change for the final race of the weekend and Tommy started from seventh place, he worked hard and again had good pace, he secured another solid seventh position. Everyone worked extremely hard, they are now looking forward to moving on to more suited circuits and fighting for the podiums and wins.

Tommy Bridewell – “It was a positive but frustrating weekend; we need to understand what the difference is having the new parts on the bike. We can see the positives its made and we just need to unlock the true potential of the new bike to allow me to just make that step forwards.

It was a good weekend, the team worked great as always, we worked hard, we were learning all weekend. We knew it wouldn’t be easy as Silverstone has always been a tricky track for us in the past.

I’m really happy with the potential we have and the steps forward that we are definitely going to make, it will only get better at the rest of the rounds.”