Tough weekend for the team at Silverstone

It was a tough weekend for the Oxford Products Ducati team at round seven, eight and nine of the Bennett British Superbike Championship at Silverstone circuit. Tommy Bridewell had an extremely difficult weekend and had to fight hard during the three races to secure a 10th, 6th and 5th place.

Qualifying was cut short by eight minutes due to an on track incident, which caused an oil spillage. Sadly Tommy was unable to get any fast laps in and was forced to start the opening race on Saturday from the very back of the grid in 24th place and it was a big task to ask. He got a great start and was soon making up the places through the pack, with tyre wear being an issue at Silverstone, Tommy made up 14 places to finish in 10th.

He was placed in tenth on the grid for race two of the weekend on Sunday and once again Tommy had to think hard about his tyres, in the closing laps he was able to make some strong passes and worked his way through to sixth to gain some valuable Championship points.

Tommy Bridewell: "It was a very tough weekend we have been suffering with severe chatter problems and I have not been able to find a way around it with my riding and I have tried everything physically possible to try and sort it but it didn’t happen. We did struggle this weekend, the team did an amazing job changing so many things on the bike in endless amounts of ways but unfortunately they never gave us a direction.

We made a big fundamental item change for the very last race which gave us light at the end of the tunnel and to now feel like we’ve got a point to work from. Race three was like FP1 so I felt like we were a little bit behind but got there in the end. We now have a good start up point for FP1 at Oulton; it was a great job by the team they gave everything as always. I feel like we are moving in the right direction now and moving forwards for the final rounds.

The next three tracks are strong for me and hopefully now we can start winning races again and I look forward to it."

Iain Hopcroft: "We move forward to the next race now and with the improvements from this weekend we hope to be back on the top step and retaining our lap record at Oulton Park!

There was a lovely 5 minute tv piece of Tommy’s background on Eurosport over the weekend which is a must watch."

In other news we are still currently leading the Ducati Performance TriOptions Cup series by 36 points with Josh Day ahead of Levi Day (no relation) who is also a supported rider.