Ryan Vickers had another positive weekend with the Honda Racing UK at the fifth round of the 2026 ZYN British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch, scoring a fifth-place and two sixth-place finishes across the weekend.
After a challenging start to the weekend, Vickers and his team battled set-up challenges during Free Practice, but were able to produce a strong lap in the all-important pre-Qualifying session to secure a Q2 positon.
In the first race, Vickers made an excellent start and quickly began to make up positions during the opening laps. By half-race distance, he found himself battling for sixth place while also improving his personal best lap time. The Honda Racing UK rider was fighting until the finish and with just a couple of laps remaining, made his move past Glenn Irwin to move into sixth.
Vickers became embroiled in a race-long battle with Leon Haslam and Christian Iddon in race two. He held sixth place for much of the race before making a decisive move with one lap remaining to claim fifth. In the process, he set his personal best lap time of the weekend once again with a 1:24.618, his fastest-ever around the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, as well as the fastest-ever Honda lap of the circuit.
In the final race, Vickers had another strong start, later moving into fifth. However, with just two laps remaining, Vickers lost out to Glenn Irwin in the battle for the top five finish and despite his best efforts to reclaim the position; he had to settle for sixth at the chequered flag.
Vickers said: "It was a little bit of a difficult weekend really. I headed there with a lot of high hopes because the last time I raced there in 2024, I had six podiums and three wins, so I was expecting to be right in the mix. It wasn't quite as easy as I'd hoped, in all honesty.
"The pace this weekend was extremely high. We finished Friday struggling a lot with grip and a few other issues, so a few of the lads drove back to the workshop on Friday night to collect a host of parts to see if they could help. Luckily for us, they did. They improved things in certain areas, but we were still lacking in others.
"Qualifying wasn't great, if I'm being honest. We struggled to make the most of a new tyre and I wasn't pleased with 13th on the grid. But Race One was great for me. We finished sixth, made some really good progress and I was pleased with our efforts. The lap times were strong and that helped me secure a better grid position for the Sprint race.
"The Sprint race was equally as good. I posted the fastest-ever Honda lap around the GP circuit, and it was my fastest-ever lap around there too. We were able to grab fifth on the final lap with a nice pass on Leon Haslam.
"We made a few changes for the final race and, if I'm honest, I feel we went in the wrong direction. I couldn't quite match the pace I had in the Sprint race. But overall I'm relatively happy. We have to take the small wins from each weekend, and I can be pleased in saying that we did the best we could. Fingers crossed we can build on this momentum now."