It has been a high pressure, busy period since my last column, and I managed qualifying for the 2017 British Superbike showdown in horrendous conditions at Silverstone, where the weekend was a strange one, to say the least.
It started really difficult for me in tough conditions on Friday, while Saturday morning was damp and I was nearly 1.5sec from the leader of the session. I then went out in qualifying and put my Fireblade on pole position, half a second under the lap record with about 10 dry laps all weekend.
Jason O’Halloran – Image courtesy of Honda Racing BSB
Race 1 was on Saturday afternoon, and starting from pole position I was feeling confident, but the rain came in before our race and it was 50-50 with the conditions. Half the circuit was wet and half was dry. There was such a mix with tyre choice on the grid, I went for intermediates with about half of the grid doing the same way.
Unfortunately it wasn’t correct and in all my years racing in England I have never seen conditions like it. Half the track was bone dry and the other was so unbelievably wet for the whole race, it was a mission to just keep the bike on two wheels, and I eventually finished 11th and would start Race 2 on Sunday from P6 on the grid.
Jason O’Halloran – Image courtesy of Honda Racing BSB
Race 2 on Sunday was full of ifs, buts and maybes. It’s the one race this year that I felt I should
have won, and could have won, if the circumstances where just a little bit different. I went for the
hard rear tyre when most of my competitors went for the soft, and I was in the lead group in fourth
place at half distance.
I was just ticking the laps off, moving forwards and feeling in control, when a safety car was deployed on lap eight due to an accident. We followed it for two laps and then the race was red flagged and called as a result, and I was demoted from fourth to fifth because that was my position on the last active lap before the safety car came out.
As the first time this year I felt in control of my competitors and the race at half distance, I was pretty devastated, but safety first and I’m glad the riders involved got the treatment they needed and got looked after.
Jason O’Halloran – Image courtesy of Honda Racing BSB
Next up was Oulton Park, where again the weather hit us pretty hard. We had patchy wet conditions
throughout practice and we ended up with a dry qualifying, while I had a pretty big crash in Q2 which
wasn’t ideal. I was pushing for a lap to go through to Q3, as I knew the times would be close and I
needed every tenth I could squeeze out.
I tucked the front on the entry to Turn 1 on the back shift from fifth to third and anyone who has been to or seen Oulton Park will know this is not a place you want to be going down in a hurry. It was quick, with the wall pretty close there at that speed, and my bike went into the protective barrier first but lifted the barrier up and I went straight underneath it and into the wall on the other side. It took a minute or two for the marshals to find me as the barrier came back down once I was under it, but they did a good job and got me to the medical centre where the BSB medical team looked after me.
I’d done some damage to my right shoulder but fortunately it wouldn’t effect me to much on Sunday.
Race 1 was wet and Race 2 was dry, I started both races from the fourth row of the grid which was
ultimately the biggest hindrance of the weekend.
Jason O’Halloran – Image courtesy of Honda Racing BSB
The wet race was tough for everyone, visibility was poor, track conditions where again very tricky and it was tough from start to finish. Race 2 was dry, I got away OK but in a few corners it was single file because it was still damp through the trees. I lost 5.2 secs to the leader by lap three but finished the race 4.6sec behind the final winner in eighth on lap 18. I felt I rode good and kept pushing until the end but it just wasn’t enough after the difficult first few laps.
We only have a few races left of the 2017 season and I am determined to finish the season on a
high, so I will be giving it 100 per cent as always for the last couple of races and hope to check in soon
with some good news.
