Peter Hickman had a consistent weekend to open the Bennetts British Superbike Championship Showdown at Oulton Park as the FHO Racing BMW rider claimed a brace of top five finishes, with the Lincolnshire rider reducing the advantage to the top of the standings by 13 points ahead of Donington Park this weekend.
Hickman had a tough qualifying session in the mixed conditions, but unfazed he worked his way through the pack to be back in the top five in the opening race of the weekend, the fourth of the eight Title Fighters in contention for the championship.
In race two, Hickman followed up with another fifth place to add more crucial points to his championship tally, finishing the final race of the opening Showdown weekend in fourth place courtesy of moving forward a position after Tarran Mackenzie received a three-second penalty.
The top five finishes means Hickman heads into this weekend’s penultimate round at Donington Park maintaining fifth place in the overall standings, but now 43 points adrift of the championship leader with a maximum of 150 points still available.
Hickman said: “Overall it was a good weekend for the FHO Racing BMW team. We started the weekend really strong, and were second at the end of Friday. Then on Saturday morning the weather really changed and I struggled with the mixed conditions, not entirely sure why, I just couldn’t find the feeling that I wanted, but a second would have put us on the front row instead of row four. It wasn’t what we needed and that put us a long way back for the first race.
“I didn’t make the best first lap and that made it really hard. I had the pace to be at the front but it just didn’t materialise, so finishing in fifth wasn’t too bad considering.
“In race two I started on the front row and got away well and then got caught up with a weird situation with Christian Iddon where it looked like there was smoke coming off his bike and I thought it was oil so I backed off a bit. It then made me go backwards to fifth or sixth and then I struggled to recover after that. I felt like I had the pace to do what we needed to, to be on the podium but it just didn’t happen.
“In race three I started tenth, which wasn’t ideal, but the same story as I felt we had the pace to be at the front. It was our best result of the weekend because of Taz’s penalty put him back a few seconds. Fourth in the end wasn’t the best result but it wasn’t the worst either. We will take the positives and move on to Donington Park where we broke the lap record a few weeks’ ago and see what we can do there.”