Tommy Bridewell made it a British Superbike Championship double at Brands Hatch on Sunday as he held off the challenge of BeerMonster Ducati team-mate Glenn Irwin and Ryan Vickers to take his sixth win of the season.

Also his fifth victory in six races, Bridewell leaves the Kent circuit with an extended 34.5 points advantage over Irwin in the overall standings.

Danny Kent (Lovell Kent Racing Honda) grabbed the holeshot but further back in the pack, Josh Brookes clipped the back of Vickers going into Paddock Hill, the net result being the FHO Racing BMW rider crashed out, fortunately without injury.

The end of the first lap saw Kent lead from Bridewell, Christian Iddon (Oxford Products Ducati), Kyle Ryde (LAMI OMG Racing Yamaha), Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) and Leon Haslam (ROKiT BMW Motorrad) but Irwin had lost four places on the opening lap, dropping back to ninth whilst Iddon took over the lead second time around as Bridewell slipped back to fourth.

Ryde’s strong ride ended at the start of lap four, the Yamaha rider’s gear linkage hanging loose, and the running order now was Iddon, Kent, Bridewell, Irwin – who’d rapidly regained places – Haslam and O’Halloran.

Vickers soon moved ahead of O’Halloran to take over sixth and by lap six, the leading six riders had opened a gap of more than a second over the rest of the field, O’Halloran now leading the chasing pack in seventh.

Lap seven saw Bridewell move back into second having found a way by Kent and a lap later Irwin did the same with a move at Hawthorn. It was a bad couple of laps for Kent as Vickers was the next to go by, the Honda man going from second to fifth in the space of two laps.

Approaching half distance, Iddon still held a slender lead of two tenths of a second over Bridewell with Vickers, Irwin and Kent close behind, but Haslam was losing ground and falling into the clutches of O’Halloran who’d pulled clear of eighth-placed Danny Buchan (Synetiq BMW).

Irwin regained third place on lap 11 only to lose it to Vickers once more at Druids a lap later but he was back in third at Hawthorn as the leading five remained nose to tail, the quintet now almost two seconds clear of new sixth place man O’Halloran.

Lap 13 and Bridewell hit the front for the first time as he looked to put the hammer down as he had done earlier in the day whilst it was a BeerMonster Ducati 1-2 two laps later as Irwin pulled off a late move on Iddon going into Surtees. Vickers benefitted too as he moved up to third.

Heading into the final five laps, there was still only half a second covering the top five with Iddon reclaiming third, but the two Ducatis of Bridewell and Irwin edged away slightly in the closing stages only for Vickers to reel them back in heading into the final 2.4 miles.

However, Bridewell was just able to hold them both off taking the victory from Irwin by 0.133s with Vickers a further tenth behind in third. Iddon rounded off his strong weekend in fourth with Kent doing likewise in fifth and it was O’Halloran, Lee Jackson, Haslam, Charlie Nesbitt and Max Cook who completed the top ten.