Jake Dixon and the RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki team had a challenging and somewhat frustrating round six of the MCE British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch with the Dover born rider taking a best finish of tenth from the two races.
The weekend started well for the 21-year old as he ran consistently in the top ten during the dry, free practice sessions but he struggled slightly in the damp qualifying session on Saturday afternoon and lined up in 13th and on the fifth row of the grid for Sunday’s opening 20-lap race.
He completed the first lap in 11th on the Kawasaki ZX-10R but by the time the safety car came out on lap five he’d been pushed back down to 13th. Such was the pace of the leading riders, making an overtaking manoeuvre proved to be difficult but Jake had fought his way up to 11th when the race ended prematurely due to rain, only 3.8s adrift of race winner Shane Byrne.
It meant he lined up for the second race later in the day in 13th on the grid once more and at the completion of the first lap around the 2.43-mile Grand Prix circuit, he was up into twelfth. By lap four, he’d moved up another spot to eleventh and when second placed Josh Brookes crashed out on lap nine, he was promoted up the order to tenth. His pace in the second half of the race was as quick as the riders in the podium positions but the time lost in the first half meant he had to settle for tenth and six points, the results seeing him slip back to eighth overall in the points table.
Speaking after the weekend, Dixon said: “It’s been a really tough weekend and we never really recovered from a technical issue we had in FP2 when I only managed four laps. I didn’t quite have the speed with the bike to allow me to fight in either race and in the beginning of each in particular it was really hard going.
“When the fuel load got lighter, I was as quick as anyone and in the second race I was the fastest rider on track at the end of the race so it’s been frustrating. It’s not the results we were hoping for so we need to go away and have a look at everything and make sure we come back stronger at the next round.”
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