British Superbike Test Day Oulton Park

19 May 2021

The third official Bennetts British Superbike Championship test session was held at Oulton Park in glorious sunshine but most importantly in front of 4000 BSB fans who had paid to get in. 

In the past BSB test days have not been well attended and you definitely did not have to pay to get in. There is no racing and no guarantee that all the teams will even turn up, so why did so many people make the journey to this lovely race track in Cheshire?

Talking to the fans trackside there was no definitive answer; some had missed the noise of a 1000cc 200bhp full on race motorcycle screaming past, some had come along because they had followed BSB for years and that's what they do and some were making the trip for the first time.

What drew my eye was the amount of people in small groups where were eating and socialising together. People were meeting up and enjoying each other's company in very pleasant soundings.

Now when you consider the demography of the average BSB fan it's going to fall in the grumpy old man bracket, and it was surprising but not unexpected to see so many smiles and see so many complete strangers chatting to each other.

Humans are social, we like to be in groups and this has been denied us for over a year. So when Boris said we can go out, people jumped at the opportunity to get back to the track, meet up with old friends and make some new ones.   

So we have happy fans, great weather and a circuit at Oulton Park that is great for the spectator photographer. All we need now is the teams to get out on track.

First up were the Supersport / GP2 / Junior Superstock and the Ducati TriOptions in all 53 machines out on track at the same time

The Supersport, Superstock and the Ducati TriOptions championships are the stepping stones used by the racers to get into the full fat BSB class. So it's unusual to see a former Champion out in the support classes. For those who have followed BSB for a few years you will know the legend that is Chris Walker.

Now a successful businessman, running Chris Walker Motorcycles in Grantham, he recently became a Ducati official dealer and is competing in this year's Ducati TriOptions Cup.

The Stalker has stood on over 80 podiums in his long career which has included MotoGP, BSB, WSB and recently sidecars. It looks like he is going to add to that tally, being placed third fastest in class on the day.

In the National Superstock 12 Luke Hedger on the Jones Dorling Racing Suzuki was fastest over all in the combined session.

Fraser Rodgers, riding the IN Competition Aprilia UK team number 89, bike was second fastest, with Tim Neave proudly flying the Lincolnshire flag bringing home third place. Only half a second separated the top three.

Number 4 Jack Kennedy is now riding in the traditional racing green of the Kawasaki corporation on the DB Race ZX6R.

He was fine tuning suspension and electronics setups during the test, which looked to have gone well as he topped every session of the timing sheet in the Supersport class.

In the GP2 class number 86 Charlie Nesbitt, the former British Motostar champion riding the Kalex machine for RS Racing/Kovara Projects, was placed fastest overall out of the three sessions. 72 Cameron Horsman was second and 47, Jake Archer third.

In the Pirelli Junior Superstock Kaya Barrington number 51 was having a few braking issues with her Kawasaki zx6r 636, but still managed to put in a personal best lap time on a track she is not familiar with.

The top three from the combined Junior Superstock times were 22 Zak Corderoy, 91 James Alderson and 6 George Stanley. 

So now on to the main event  - the British Superbikes. With three hour long test sessions scheduled we were going to get a glimpse of who will be the front runners this year first hand, or are we?

I've been to a few test days and they can give you an indication of how well the teams are set up but there are factors you are just not told about on a test day.

The tyres that the teams are running have a big influence on the lap times. Were they running full race setup? Probably, for a few laps, but it's all about gathering data these days to find that edge over the other competitors.

The first session top three riders were Josh Brookes, standard, Kyle Ryde, interesting, and Jason O'Halloran, could it be his year?

Session two had the amazing sounding RAF Regular Reserves Kawasaki of Ryan Vickers on top spot, Kyle Ryde (this is getting interesting), now second and the O Show in third again.

The bragging rights of the top spot went right down to the wire with it all happening in the final session. Josh Brookes was sitting on the top of the time sheet towards the end of the session.

Then, Jason O'Halloran grabbed the number one slot followed buy Vickers, pushing both of them back down the list. Peter Hickman on the new for 2021 FHO BMW decided he was going to join in but could only manage second place.

However, it was not over. In the last few minutes of track time, O'Halloran grabbed top spot back from Vickers then Tommy Bridewell snatched second, pushing Vickers down to third and Hickman to fourth.

Josh Brooks ended up in fifth as the flag fell. But where was Kyle "interesting" Ryde while all of this was going on? He crashed at the Island bend. It’s a long walk from there, I hope he got a lift.     

At the end of the three sessions the combined lap times had Jason O'Halloran first, Tommy Bridewell second and amazingly Ryan Vickers didn’t fall off all day and came in third fastest. 

I'm not going to read too much into these times. Yes they are fast and going for it, but O'Halloran was over half a second off Tommy Bridewell's lap record of 1:33.94.

Racing is very different to testing. But come race day and given the right weather conditions we could see some records tumble this year as Glenn Irwin demonstrated at Silverstone during testing.

So that concludes our round up of the Third BSB test day and the first one open to the public this year. In short, it was great to get back to the track, the weather played ball and the riders from all classes were pushing hard entertaining the gathered masses.

The PistonClick team will be off to Donington for the final Test Day on the 8th of June and I for one can't wait.

Thanks to Keith Adcock and David Harbey for the images, you can see more of Davids work at the links below.