Tommy Bridewell went into Oulton Park with the goal of winning all three British Superbike races and whilst he didn’t quite achieve that, he came mightily close as he outscored championship leader Bradley Ray, 65 points to 52. The Oxford Products Ducati rider had the most ground to make up to Ray coming into the Showdown and with a win and two seconds at the weekend, he shot up the leaderboard from eighth overall to second. “I’m definitely happy, 100 per cent, and we had a good, strong weekend,” Bridewell told bikesportnews.com. “We set out our goals before the weekend and we clawed back a decent amount of points to Brad whilst moving up to second in the championship was an added bonus.
It’s what we needed and a good step in the right direction.” The weekend obviously wasn’t without its fair share of drama with at least two of the Showdown contenders ruled out of the next round, Tarran Mackenzie missing the rest of the season altogether.
And Bridewell himself was caught up in some controversy when he made contact with Jason O’Halloran in Sunday’s first race, the McAMS Yamaha rider crashing out. “I genuinely felt bad for Jason and am genuinely sorry for those guys with how their weekend went.
No rider goes racing to cause another to crash. Jason was quite slow up and over Clay Hill and I felt the move was on so took the opportunity.