It was a weekend of what could have been at Oulton Park, as Stockport’s Christian Iddon narrowly missed out on a podium at his ‘home’ track in leafy Cheshire.
The Tyco BMW rider Qualified in ninth place for the first of two Races at the historic parkland track, and showed his potential in morning Warm-up, finishing second by just nine-thousandths of a second.
A bumper crowd turned out in the May Day sunshine to witness the latest Rounds of the 2017 British Superbike Championship.
Despite dropping to tenth position briefly in Race One, Iddon climbed to eighth place at the flag, just a tenth of a second behind the Yamaha of Josh Brookes, coincidentally qualifying eighth for Race Two. Leon Haslam claimed the win for Kawasaki.
Climbing to fifth on the opening lap, Iddon settled in to sixth place as he rode amongst a high-speed quintet including Luke Mossey, Jason O’Halloran, Josh Brookes and Glenn Irwin. Christian rose to fifth by lap twelve, and was promoted to third two laps later as Haslam dramatically collided with James Ellison [Yamaha], who had suffered a technical issue. Nicking second place off Mossey a lap later it was a three lap dash for the line, Iddon succumbed to Irwin with a lap to go, then narrowly missed out on the final podium spot, O’Halloran claiming third place by two-tenths of a second as the chequered flag fell. Shane Byrne taking overall Race honours
Admitted Christian:
“It was my first weekend without a trophy this year, which is a shame being on home track at Oulton Park.
“A weekend which was pretty difficult. When we did the official test we struggled a bit, so I’m actually really happy that the bike was a lot better than it was at the test, so that was great work.
“I feel like we could have got more out of the two races: the first race I ended up eighth, but should have been fourth. I didn’t have much pace to start with, and they did start to come back to me, I thought that I had the speed to come back through the pack but didn’t quite manage it.
“Then the second race we had the chance of second, it was a mad battle, it was really good fun, and just missed out on getting on the podium. The bike definitely deserved a podium, Tyco BMW put a great bike under me for the second one, I’m actually really excited now, we tried something new on the out lap and decided to run with it. So I’m looking to do a test which we have in this break now”.
Christian left Oulton sitting third in the overall Championship standings, as the Series heads North of the border to Knockhill, in Scotland, on the 16-18 June.