Tommy Bridewell put in a near faultless display of riding in the third and final Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Donington Park this weekend to take the win and deny Honda Racing a clean sweep of victories.
The Oxford Products Ducati rider checked out at the very beginning and, lapping more than half a second quicker than anyone else, had opened up a gap of more than four seconds by lap 11. He never looked back and apart from an out of the seat moment exiting the chicane, never put a wheel wrong.
There was plenty of drama further behind though in the battle for second between the VisionTrack Ducati of Josh Brookes and the Honda Racing duo of Glenn and Andrew Irwin.
Brookes looked to have sealed the runners-up spot as he edged away of the pursuing pack on lap 18 but the Honda pairing and McAMS Yamaha’s Jason O’Halloran pegged him back with just three laps to go.
Glenn Irwin was the first to pounce at the chicane to move up to second and Andrew then tried to move ahead on lap 24. Exiting Redgate, he pulled alongside Brookes but they touched at the top of Hollywood and Brookes went down at high speed, fortunately without injury.
The result remains under investigation with Andrew Irwin facing a possible time penalty but Bridewell took the win ahead of the two Irwins with O’Halloran taking fourth ahead of the second VisionTrack Ducati of Christian Iddon and Kawasaki’s Danny Buchan.
Hector Barbera looked on course for a podium position when he moved up to third on lap 11 but that was as good as it got for the Rich Energy OMG Racing rider and he slipped back to ninth behind Tarran Mackenzie and Kyle Ryde with Ryan Vickers completing the top ten.
