Oulton BSB: Bridewell comes out on top in race three

Tommy Bridewell claimed his first win of the season at Oulton Park on Sunday, the Oxford Products Ducati rider taking a narrow victory over Honda’s Glenn Irwin and Cheshire Mouldings FS-3 Kawasaki’s Lee Jackson in the final Bennetts British Superbike race of the weekend.

Championship leader Bradley Ray (Rich Energy OMG Yamaha) again ran into difficulties as the race wore, after leading for the first half of the race, and slipped back to fifth which meant his lead was cut back to 40 points. Irwin grabbed the lead from pole position, but Ray moved ahead at Lodge at the end of the opening lap and led over the line from Irwin, Jackson, Bridewell, Danny Buchan (Synetiq BMW) and Tom Sykes (MCE Ducati). Leon Haslam (VisionTrack Kawasaki) was running in seventh with Josh Brookes on the second MCE machine one place further back in eighth. By lap three, Ray was already beginning to pull away and his lead was up to 0.6s as he started lap four, Irwin a similar distance ahead of new third-placed rider Bridewell, the Ducati man having overhauled Jackson at Hizzy’s. Bridewell was the quickest man on circuit next time around and both he and Irwin were quicker than Ray as the leader’s advantage came back down to 0.4s. Indeed, there was still only 1.4s between the top five at one third race distance. A second further back, Sykes continued to fight off the close attentions of Haslam, teammate Brookes and FHO BMW’s Peter Hickman. Lap eight saw Irwin take the lead and relegate Ray back to second and the whole group was bunching back together with only two seconds covering the leading nine riders as they started lap nine. Ray’s pace was again slackening and Bridewell took full advantage on the ninth lap to move up into second. He didn’t stop