Tommy triumphant at Donington
It was such a mixed weekend for the Oxford Racing Ducati team at the opening round of the Bennetts British Superbikes Championship at Donington Park. Tommy Bridewell secured a fifth in the opening race, ninth in race two and then he went on to get a fantastic win in the third and final race of the weekend.
After being troubled with set-up issues throughout practice and qualifying it was bitter sweet to end a tough weekend with an amazing win.
The team worked incredibly hard all weekend to get a bike Tommy felt comfortable on. They had a lot of new settings and components to test and they had to pack it into a short space of time.
Tommy qualified for the opening race of the weekend in eighth place. He got a steady start but had to work hard to carve his way through the pack eventually securing a solid fifth.
His consistent lap times gained him a front row start on Sunday for race two. The second race was fraught with a lot of pushing and shoving going on. Tommy lost one of the famous Ducati wings into turn one when he was hit by another rider, this caused a few issues with the handling of the bike. Tommy pushed hard and was sat in third place but had to take avoiding action into the chicane in the closing laps, running across the gravel and dropping several places to ninth at the chequered flag.
His times were once again super consistent and fast enough to put him on pole position for the final race of the weekend. Tommy was gone as soon as the lights went green; no one saw which way he went. At one point he opened up over a four second lead and was looking dominant. His lap times were great and at one point broke the lap record before it got broken again a few laps later by another rider. He eased off a little with four laps to go but still took an awesome win, two seconds ahead of the second placed man.
Tommy - “To be honest I’m very very happy to get the win. We struggled all weekend and we had a number of issues that led me to feel really uncomfortable on the bike, free practice and qualifying were really tricky. We kept our head down and we were happy to salvage a decent qualifying and get a result of fifth in race one.
We really got the bike going well for race two; we tried some things in morning warm-up and then went bold with more changes for the race. It was a shame I made a mistake going into the last chicane and ran through the gravel. I’d worked so hard in that race, got a bit beaten up, came back through and dug deep to challenge for the win. Two laps to go and Andrew (Irwin) stopped his bike a lot sooner than I, and I like to carry corner speed; I had to swerve to miss him, which caused me to run straight on.
Starting from pole made it a lot easier for the last race. I didn’t have a game plan, I wasn’t sure if I had the pace to lead from start to finish. I expected another big dog fight like the other two races but I felt good off the line and the time on my pit board just kept going up. I didn’t want to ruin the tyre as it was 26 laps with a track temperature of 40 degrees. I thought I’d push really hard for a few laps but saw the lap times going up and up. At that point I just thought I had to keep riding the way I was. The credit must go to the team, they were flawless and worked so hard to get me comfortable on the bike, and honestly I can’t thank them enough for this weekend and the effort and hard work that they have put in.”
“It was sad not to have the fans there and my thoughts also go to anyone that has been affected by covid over the last few months. We are lucky to have been allowed to come racing and do what we do best and thanks to everyone involved in letting us do that this weekend. I am looking forward to Snetterton and hopefully we can get a few more wins there.”