Christian Iddon kept his ‘Showdown’ hopes alive with a pair of solid results in the British Superbike Championship at the weekend, the series’ making its annual pilgrimage to Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire.
Iddon, whose sights are firmly set on clawing back the points he needs to get in to the BSB Championship’s ‘Showdown’, had a last-minute setback at the Lincolnshire track when the chain on his bike ‘jumped’ as the Stockport rider was about to go out for the final minutes of Qualifying, leaving him with just a single lap to set ninth fastest on the grid for the first of two races.
A great opening few laps in race one saw the TYCO BMW rider run as high as fifth place, Iddon comfortable with his pace but problems under braking allowed Michael Laverty [Yamaha], Lee Jackson [BMW] and Peter Hickman [BMW] to grab places back from Christian, dropping him back to eighth place, where he would cross the line on the shirt-tails of Laverty, just 0.064secs behind his former team-mate.
He dropped a couple of places over the first few laps of the race, Tommy Bridewell [Kawasaki] and Jason O’Halloran [Honda] nipping through.
As the race progressed Iddon took the opportunity to nick a place back from Bridewell, but couldn’t quite claim the place back off O’Halloran, crossing the line just two-tenths off the Honda’s back wheel.
“Eighth and fifth doesn’t sound too bad,” admitted Christian. ” But that’s my worse points haul of the year,
“More frustrating as well because I felt like we had good pace all weekend, every time we went out on track the bike got better and better.
“When we got in the race it became apparent that we were weak on the brakes, and that really hindered us. That was the main issue.
“There’s three races at Silverstone, all to play for, the team and I are going to do everything we can. Three races to see who’s going to be title fighters, hopefully it’s us”.
The next meeting at Silverstone, on September 8-10, hosts the final three rounds to see who takes part in the Championship’s Showdown where the top six riders fight it out for the chance to become 2017 BSB Champion.