Having taken his maiden win at Snetterton, Christian Iddon’s 2020 Bennetts British Championship challenge took a dent at Silverstone at the weekend as a best finish of seventh saw him slip from third to sixth in the title standings.

The VisionTrack Ducati rider suffered with the rear grip issues that have plagued him at various stages this season, challenging the top three for two thirds of the races before slipping back through the pack.

“I felt pretty good in the first part of Saturday’s race when I was running with the front bunch and it’s where I felt I should have been. We then encountered some issues which we’d not had all weekend and I struggled massively,” said Iddon.

“I was hoping to get a fifth place at worst but had one or two other issues in the final stages and I was lucky to finish. Eighth place was a bit of a kick in the teeth.”

While most riders have complained about front end chatter with the 2020-spec Pirelli tyres, it’s the rear where Iddon has suffered and the problems were particularly evident in Sunday’s opening race at the 1.64-mile circuit when he faded in the latter stages all the way back to 13th.

The final race saw him well to the fore and he was running in third place as late as the 20th of the 30 laps before he again ran out of rear grip and dropped back. On this occasion, the fall off in pace wasn’t as dramatic and he took seventh, one place behind his team-mate Josh Brookes.

“It was a very tough weekend for me. Sunday’s opening race was horrendous with another couple of technical problems including another tyre issue so going into the third and final race, I wasn’t feeling confident at all.”

“I tried a different strategy and it was a positive step but with three laps to go, the problems reoccurred, and I got mugged by three or four people. I came here with high hopes and our results didn’t reflect that.”