An heroic ride by Jake Dixon in the opening MCE British Superbike Championship race at Oulton Park on Sunday ensured the 21-year old and the RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki team remained in Showdown contention with five races still remaining.
Dixon had to start the race from pit lane but fought his way up to fourth and with sixth in the second race, he still sits in fourth overall.
The Ashby resident signalled his intentions for the weekend from the word go when, having consistently run inside the top three in free practice, he claimed a superb pole position for Sunday’s opening 18-lap race with a time of 1m33.959s during Saturday’s qualifying session. It put him in a superb frame of mind for the first of the two races although rain meant it would be a wet start to proceedings.
However, damage from a crash in morning warm-up meant he only just made the race start and, when he did it was from pit lane and not pole position. What followed though was simply superb and belied his years as he fought his way through the pack in the difficult conditions, moving up to fifth on lap 14. There was further drama when race leader Dan Linfoot went out on lap 14 with a technical issue and although the race was subsequently stopped, thus denying Jake a chance of third, fourth was a brilliant result.
His sterling efforts were rewarded with the fastest lap of the race which meant he could start the second encounter from a deserved pole position and he duly completed the first lap in the lead. He remained here until the tenth lap when first race winner Leon Haslam pushed him back to second and with the softer SC0 tyre not giving him as much grip as some of his rivals, the second half of the race proved to be a much sterner test. Jake was powerless to defend his position as he would have liked but he still crossed the line in sixth for ten valuable points, just eight adrift now of second place.
Team-mate Jordan Weaving qualified in a season’s best fourth for Saturday’s opening Pirelli National Superstock 1000 race but he didn’t quite have the pace to maintain that position in the fully dry conditions and, after also experiencing wheelspin, he slipped back to 14th although the tenth fastest lap meant he still started the second race from the fourth row of the grid.
Held over the slightly shorter distance of 11 laps, a good start by the 20-year old saw him move up to ninth and he got stronger and stronger throughout the race. With four laps of the race remaining, he was up to fifth and although James Rispoli pushed him back to sixth half way round the final lap, the former Superstock 600 Champion responded with an excellent final corner pass to secure a superb fifth place.
Jake Dixon: “Being perfectly honest, I’m a bit disappointed with today’s results, especially after qualifying on pole position. Everything had been going well up until morning warm-up when I had a big crash on the approach to Lodge and it smashed the bike up pretty bad giving the team a lot of work to do in a short space of time.
“The bike was literally taped together and I had to start from pit lane and dead last but it worked brilliantly and to finish fourth was pleasing. For the second race it was hard to know which tyre to go with but I opted to go with the softer SC0 which proved to be the wrong choice as it dropped off half way through the race.
“I did what I could and managed to finish sixth and salvage a half decent result but I’ve shown great pace and what I can do so we’ll look to get back in amongst the podium finishers at the next round.”
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