A sick Christian Iddon takes a brilliant ninth and fifth as the team make great progress at Donington

The Oxford Products Ducati Team made massive progress at Donington this weekend, despite luck not going the team’s way. Some technical issues were fixed on the Friday and Christian Iddon had made a brilliant start to yesterday’s race, only to be taken out by another rider.

The lost lap times resulted saw Christian line up 15th place for the first of the two races today. But Christian had more than the poor grid slot to contend with. He fell ill during the night so badly that the team considered pulling him from the races. But he was determined to make it onto the grid and went out and scored a top ten finish coming home in ninth.

A short rest and he was back out again for the final race of the weekend, once again starting from 15th. But this time he went even better, battling with the group of riders out at the front and finishing in fifth, and only five seconds down the road from the winner, and with a podium finish in sight.

Steve ‘Wilf’ Moore
Oxford Products Racing Ducati – Team Owner / Crew Chief
“Bit of a weekend of testing the team, certainly. More technical issues, that I can happily report we finally fixed on Friday. Set us on the back foot a little bit. And then Christian got taken out in the race yesterday, had an accident, a racing incident, whatever you want to call it, but didn't finish the race. Lacked the data we needed for the race today and then unfortunately overnight Christian got very ill.

We’ve been to the medical centre. They've been amazing and helped him out with some drugs and tried to get some fluids into him. But he had one hour sleep last night and was very ill. We almost pulled him from the race today, but he was insisting to ride in Warm Up where we tried the SC0 tyre.

Christian was very ill in the race and the last race he did an amazing job to come through from starting row five on the grid to fifth and in sight of the podium, particularly being very ill twice in the race including all over our motorcycle and his leathers. But that's washable, so we’re happy enough, and we’ve made massive progress. I can’t thank the team enough.”