Eighth for Christian Iddon in the Sprint Race at Oulton as he continues to make progress with the Oxford Products Racing Ducati team

Christian Iddon qualified in eleventh for today’s BikeSocial Sprint race at Oulton Park, which didn’t really do justice to his pace on the Oxford Products Racing Ducati. But a good start in the afternoon’s race saw him in the mix with several other riders, and he climbed up as high as seventh by Lap 7.

However, the race was red-flagged in the dying laps as the leaders put their hands up due to slippery track conditions, with Christian finishing eighth, his best result to date this season. He will start the first of tomorrow’s races from third row in ninth.

Christian Iddon
Oxford Products Racing Ducati #21 – 8th

“Free Practice 1 was a funny one, we had a few little things going on and we made some progress in Free Practice 2, then made a big run out in the damp / wet this morning, which was pretty good actually. We were quite competitive.

In qualifying we took a bit of a gamble. Although I don't believe it really was a gamble. I took what I believe was the right tyre choice and I made a mistake on the one lap that mattered, which sort of hindered us a little bit for the grid slot.

In the race, I'm just not clicking with the bike yet. We're not missing loads, but it's enough to just make life hard work for me. Once we get there, we’ll be mint. We’re super strong in certain places. Now we just need to try and improve those weak points, and if we're going to retain the places that we’re strong, then that's great, and even become on par with some of the others in the other places. And there's no reason why we can't be fighting up the front, that’s where we should be, I think.

The race itself I got reasonable start. We've been struggling with starts lately, but we've changed some of the settings in the bike and now it's getting off the line like a bike normally would, because there were some little things weren’t right with it, how the power comes in, but they've been rectified which is really good. But actually, I think it's not scared me, but I've learnt to set off in a bad way. Now I need to remember it works. So yeah, hopefully we got some good starts tomorrow because that's normally one of my strong points.

But I got off the line alright. Turn 1 was always going to be a little bit difficult. It was a little bit damp so I think everyone went in a little bit gingerly, but thankfully everyone got through. And then I just wasn’t positive enough in my passes on the group that was in front. I think I probably could have gone with Andrew Irwin who was the next rider ahead. I just wasn’t positive enough early on and didn’t use the strengths of the bike early on enough, so if we can make a bit better on that tomorrow we should be good.”