Unlucky start to the 2023 British Superbike season for Christian Iddon

The Bennetts British Superbike Championship’s opening round took place at Silverstone this weekend, but unfortunately it was one to forget for Oxford Products Racing Ducati and Christian Iddon.

The opening race on Saturday saw Iddon hit with technical issues, bringing his Panigale V4 R home at the back of the field, while the second race the following day ending in a DNF after Iddon was taken out unhurt on Lap 5 by Charlie Nesbitt at Luffield.

A lack of race laps resulted in a poor grid position for Sunday’s final race, with Iddon having his work cut out. But he was at least able to finish his race in a points-scoring position in 11th.

Iddon and the team now look ahead to Round Two at Oulton Park later this month, where we will have time to regroup and start our 2023 BSB campaign afresh.

Christian Iddon
Oxford Products Racing Ducati #21

“100% not the not the weekend we'd all hoped for. Expected actually, not necessarily hoped for, but what we expect. And it was a million miles from that. Free practice everything was actually going quite well.

Qualified so-so, but I just got really bad start for the first race and was involved in a little bit of a difficult first lap. That that made things difficult and then we suffered the technical issue, so I finished, but finished last in the first race which was annoying, and that gave me a really bad grid slot for the second race.

And then I got took out really early in the second race, which gave me a horrendous grid slot for Race 3. It's just a snowball effect.

The last race I did the best I could. I'll always do that, but it was only good enough for 11th at the flag which is really not acceptable. But we lost a lot of information from the full-length race, the race before, and then the bike started to do things and the last four-five laps that I sort of wasn't really ready for. We look to regroup, move onward and upward to the next round.”