British Super Bikes - Round 5

Donington Park

13th - 15th August 2021

I checked my photographic archive for images of the British Super Bikes at Donington Park, and it was back in 2019 when I last went to see BSB racing here. I did go to the test day in June of this year but testing is very different to racing.

The atmosphere is different on a test day. The racers only do a few laps before going back into the pits to make adjustments and there isn't the anticipation in the crowd of watching a battle royal between the front runners; the atmosphere is missing from test days.

I picked Saturday for my visit, and according to the timetable that would give me one hour thirty-one minutes to capture the photos I wanted of the BSB riders.

That’s not a lot of time but it would be broken down into three sessions - free practice, two 12 minute qualifying sessions and one 40 minute sprint race. This would allow me to pick three different places to view the action.

As the National Circuit was in use, three of the best places to photograph motorcycles at Donington were not going to be available. The Fogarty Esses, the Melbourne Loop and Goddards are part of the GP circuit so I would have to get creative.

The obvious place for getting a good picture is the inside of Redgate.

You, me and the rest of the spectator photographer community know this so it is usually packed and unless you get there early, or have a step, you will be struggling to get a good shot.

As it turned out there were not that many people at Redgate and we had plenty of room to spread out to watch the support race qualifying sessions. In fact, I was quite surprised at how few people were trackside.

There were a lot of people camping over the weekend, in fact it was sold out but the external car parks were far from overflowing.

However, it was not a bad sized crowd and as all of Donington is now open after the COVID restrictions have been lifted, there is a lot of space, so there were probably more people there than I perceived. 

So, on to the main event - Round Five of the BSB championships. As I predicted some time ago, Yamaha have upped their game and are now first and second in the championship.

Jason O'Halloran won the sprint race and Tarran MacKenzie the second race, both are riding for the McAMS Yamaha race team.

Tommy Bridewell took the top spot in the last race on Sunday in mixed conditions riding the Ducati Oxford Products Racing Ducati. 

For the Saturday sprint race we picked Coppice to capture the action as it’s a great location to photograph the first few laps.

As we had arrived early we took the opportunity to photograph the Ducati Performance TriOptions Cup.

#1 Josh Day had a lonely race at the front with #75 Elliott Pinson coming in second and David Shoubridge in third.

Coppice is a large corner which gives you the option to move around the out-field for a different view point between laps, or to use the tunnel and move inside the track.

However, you have to be quick when moving as the BSB riders complete a lap of the National circuit in just over a minute. 

As it happened I had plenty of time to get infield as Joey Thompson ran a little wide on lap five and over cooked it whilst trying to get back in contention.

I thought he was going to high side as the back end kicked out but he pulled it back and low sided. I think he had the wind knocked out of him when he hit the track but walked out of the kitty litter with the help of the orange army.

The safety car was then deployed while the Marshalls recovered Joey's bike. Glenn Irwin formed up behind the BMW followed by Iddon, O’Halloran, Mackenzie, Irwin and Vickers.

After the safety car had pulled in it took a few laps for Jason O'Halloran to move through to the front and go on to win by nearly two seconds ahead of the chasing pack, setting the fastest lap in the process of 1:06.137 on lap 13 of 20. 

Sunday had two races. Tarran MacKenzie took the win in the first ahead of Bradley Ray and Jason O'Halloran. There was a lot of argy-bargy with the emphasis on the bargy.

Jason O'Halloran, Christian Iddon and Tarran MacKenzie look to be championship contenders but Iddon's title hopes took a blow as he crashed out after contact with Andrew Irwin. Irwin received a two second penalty for his actions.

It's not surprising that contact happens during racing as the top five machines in qualifying were separated by hundredths of a second, so are evenly matched in a straight race.

It's down to how much the rider wants the win, and for a lot of them they want it bad,  so will make that questionable lunge to gain an advantage.

It wasn’t just Irwin making the moves, the majority of the front runners were at it, even Hicky one of the safest riders out there, swapped a bit of paint.   

One rider that wasn’t trading blows was Josh Brookes. The current BSB champion was off the pace again this weekend.

The rumours on the internet were correct about Josh Brookes. He was racing with his standard race number, 25. At the start of the season he had the option of running the number one place as he was the 2020 Champion.   

So far he hasn’t troubled the front runners this year, so was it a little bit embarrassing for him running mid pack with the number 1 plate, or is Mr Brookes a bit superstitious, or has the fire in his belly gone out?

What ever it was he has made a slight improvement coming in fourth in race three. However, it needs to be taken into context as the race was started then stopped due to rain, then restarted, with riders unsure of what the weather was going to do so it was a mixed grid of intermediate, wets and slick tires.

The riders on inters went on to the podium. The riders on full wets dropped like a stone down the running order - Hicky went from pole to 13th.

Tommy Bridewell made the right choice and crossed the line in first place. A great result for a great rider.

Support Races

In the Saturday Quattro Group British Supersport & British GP2 Championships qualifying it all went wrong, resulting in a red flag with 10 min left.

#61 Ben Currie's chain came off or snapped coming out of Redgate. We heard his bike revving to the max a few times with no forward drive and then my shooting buddy spotted the chain sliding down the track to confirm it. 

All hell then broke loose. The chain must have damaged Currie's bike, releasing fluids as the following rides started going down. About four or five came off and loads more took avoiding action.

The resulting major clean up took a while and ended in the times posted so far standing which put #13 Lee Johnston on pole for the sprint race.

Johnston couldn’t convert pole into a podium and it was #86 Charlie Nesbit (GP2) first #97 Bradley Perie second (first in the Supersport) and #4 Jack Kennedy taking the last podium place.

In the feature race #6 Harry Truelove, #61 Ben Currie and #86 Charlie Nesbit in third took the honors.

In the Pirelli National Superstock Championship, Tom Neave was on it this weekend. Taking his first pole this year in the qualifying he was looking good for race one and did cross the line in first place.

However, he had taken the lead from Luke Mossey when he ran wide. That sounds fine, but unfortunately there were yellow flags out so Tom was relegated to second.

With a point to prove and on pole again after posting the fastest lap in race one, he led from start to finish. This puts Tom in second place in the Championship standings, with 113 points.

Alex Olsen is in first place - he also has 113 points but he has three wins to Tom's one. The next round will be at Cadwell Park, Tom's home track.

We will be there to watch how he gets on and to experience my favourite round of British Superbikes, the Party in the Park. Bring it on!

Photographic Post Script

Flames - we all like flames and they are relatively easy to capture in automotive photography if you apply a few basic principles. The first one is location.

Generally, flames will appear from a vehicle when there is unburnt fuel in the exhaust.

This happens when the rider closes the throttle and then opens it. So on the entrance to a corner you will get a little flame/pops, but the big flames come when the throttle is opened as the rider sees the exit to the corner. 

The second principle is that you will need to be taking a lot of photos as quickly as you can. You can't be certain when, or even if, the bike will flame so you just need to keep the button pressed as you follow the bike into the area that you have seen it flame on previous laps. 

It also depends on how the bike is mapped. Some of the teams will deliberately introduce fuel into the system on a closed throttle. Why?

Well it wasn’t just me taking loads of pictures of #77 Taylor MacKenzie on the gorgeous Bathams BMW Motorrad, everyone was snapping him.

It looked like he had a flammenwerfer (WW2 German flamethrower) attached to the back of his bike! Great stuff and great for the sponsors, flames = loads of pictures on social media = loads of exposure for the sponsors.

Thanks to RPW Photography for the images in this report. You share this article with your friends on Social Media.