It was another classic MCE British Superbike battle with a cliffhanger ending that saw Leon Haslam steal the show but Shane Byrne take his first set of back-to-back titles while Josh Brookes, with a team that had been written off in most quarters before they had turned a wheel, almost forgotten in the hubub.
Haslam went into the final with a 32-point lead over Brookes and Byrne trailed by a further point. It couldn’t have gone any worse for the Derby rider as he suffered with a broken clutch, an over-inflated tyre and then brake failure which resulted in a trip to hospital and third in the title chase.
Byrne did what he needed to do to win his sixth BSB Championship while Brookes went about his business to claim second but it was Haslam’s post-race gesture - congratulating Byrne while enduring the pain of broken ankle, wrist and thumb - which stole all the headlines.
Peter Hickman, who had been the star of the roads show all year, finished fourth while young gun Jake Dixon took Lee Hardy’s team to fifth place, one ahead of Jason O’Halloran - the only man to do anything useful on the ‘new’ Fireblade in 2017. Special mention must go to rookie Bradley Ray who took a satellite GSX-R1000 to 11th place ahead of his works-backed team-mates, one of which was former MotoGP rider and WorldSBK Champion Sylvain Guintoli.
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