Oxford Racing Ducati’s Tommy Bridewell is confident he can continue the fight for Bennetts British Superbike Championship honours as he leaves Oulton Park in joint lead of the series.

The Devizes rider sits tied at the top on 64 points with McAMS Yamaha’s Taz Mackenzie after bagging two seconds at the Cheshire track, as he and his Be Wiser Ducati rival Josh Brookes made it a double Ducati V4R one-two.

“You can see this weekend the Ducati has been a strong package to be on, Josh has ridden mega, so it bodes well for the championship,” he said.

I genuinely am here to fight for the championship – I have the package, I have the bike, so we just need to keep consistent and keep getting podium credits.”

Bridewell, who stated after qualifying on Saturday that the team needed to go ‘back to the drawing board’ to try and unlock the potential of the machine, was also keen to admit he may have been a bit hasty with his comments.

“Yeah we made some changes, did some analysis and if I’m honest, I was quite hard on myself and team because this weekend it has been hard to get a judge of where people’s pace is.

“I was quite happy following Josh to see he was working quite hard because through the weekend it almost seemed it was a bit easier than it was for me. We made quite a gutsy change for race two and we were able to up the pace, but obviously so was Josh.

“To be fair we’ve had a mega start to the season and now we’re joint championship lead, which is good for us and good for the Ducati.

“I know it doesn’t look it but I did slightly on the back foot this weekend. But the way we’ve started the year is more than we ever could have dreamt of. We’ve come here we’ve been competitive, now we need to keep on the way we’re going.”