Brands Hatch GP: Round 3
It was a pretty successful weekend for the Oxford Products Ducati Racing team this weekend at Brands Hatch circuit with Tommy Bridewell. He secured two fantastic second places and was unfortunate to have a technical issue in the final race forcing him to retire.
Tommy and the team worked hard on Friday to get the bike set up for the fantastic Brands Hatch circuit and he was able to secure a place in Saturdays Superpicks, the top 12 riders from practice on Friday automatically get put straight into the second qualifying session.
The team worked hard overnight to make some more tweaks to the Ducati and again before qualifying. Tommy shined in that session and ended up on the front row in second place for the opening race of the weekend. He struggled off the start and was in sixth place when the red flag came out due to an incident on the circuit. On the re-start Tommy was eager to get a better start but once again found himself down in sixth place. He had to dig deep and make some strong passes but worked his way through the field, he was able to get on the back of Tarran Mackenzie but was not able to make a clean pass on him, securing a brilliant second place.
For race two on Sunday he was placed in fourth place on the grid, once again another bad start saw him slip back to eighth on the opening lap. He really did put in some amazing lap times to push his way through and made some exceptional passes to get up to second place again. He caught up 1.7 second gap to the back of Jason O Halloran but by this point his tyres did not have much left to make any moves, another very solid second place for Tommy.
A front row start for Tommy in the final race of the day, with mixed conditions anything was possible, the race was red flagged due to track contamination. A tyre swap in the pits and he was looking forward to getting out fighting again. However his chain broke on the opening lap and that was the end of the race for Tommy and the team.
Tommy Bridewell: “Firstly my thoughts go to Brad Jones and his family and friends, I hope he can continue to keep fighting and make a good recovery. That’s the most important part of the weekend, we all come racing to race and do well but the most important thing is that we all go home safe.
I’m really happy with the two second places this weekend, we made some really good progress, had a great qualifying session but I’m struggling a bit to get the bike off the line. I’m not making excuses but I’m dropping back on the start and having a lot of work to do to get back towards the front runners. By the time I’ve got back up to the leaders I’ve used most of my grip so then it’s harder to push. The team worked so hard as always and to come away with two second places is great. I’m gutted about race three but now we concentrate on Thruxton this weekend and hope for some more podium results.”
The Ducati Cup saw our rider Josh Day take victory in race one and other supported rider fill four more spots inside the top ten but race two had it’s trouble with rain just before the start leaving riders unsure what tyre to choose, Josh opted for wets but the track dried up as the race went on to finish 6th and Chris walker (Moto Rapido rider) took his maiden victory this season as he opted for dry compound tyres.
Moto3 was equally action packed with Ryan Hitchcock completing his Practice sessions in P2 in the dry conditions but qualifying was wet… Ryan was 15th and Ollie Walker started his race from 11th.
The boys rode both so well despite Ollie's poor start he finished in 9th and Ryan stormed through the pack to almost grab a podium position in 4th!
Race two saw Ryan start from the front row, Ryan and Ollie finished 5th and 6th respectively, a great improvement from our young stars.
We now have a quick turnaround for Thruxton this week, Make sure you catch it on Quest tv or Eurosport player live this weekend