Glenn Irwin took pole position for this afternoon’s Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Cadwell Park, the Honda Racing rider just edging out Championship leader Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) and Peter Hickman (FHO Racing BMW).
The damp weather from the morning had been replaced by a dry track all round for qualifying and with Tarran Mackenzie, Gino Rea, Storm Stacey, Takumi Takahashi – impressing at Honda’s local circuit – Xavi Fores and BSB debutante Tim Neave progressing from Q1, it was the short, 12-minute Q2 session that ultimately decided the grid positions for the afternoon’s 14-lap race.
It was Christian Iddon (VisionTrack Ducati) who set the initial pace at 1’26.904 but this was quickly upstaged, and by some margin by Irwin, the Honda man posting 1’26.116 to go eighth tenths of a second clear before Tommy Bridewell (Oxford Products Racing Ducati) halved that gap and moved into second.
Lee Jackson (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) then took over second spot, just 0.191s behind Irwin and although Bridewell improved his time, he remained in third position ahead of new fourth place man O’Halloran. Friday’s pace setter Ryan Vickers (RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki) slotted into fifth with Iddon pushed back to sixth.
That’s soon changed though as Hickman and Jackson’s team-mate Rory Skinner went into fifth and sixth before they too dropped down the order as a result of Andrew Irwin jumping up to fourth on the Synetiq BMW. Brother Glenn improved his table topping time too with a 1’26.012s which increased his advantage over Jackson to 0.295s.
However, with five minutes to go, the red flag came out due to Vickers crashing out at Chris Curve and that resulted in two, and potentially three, flying laps to decide the grid positions.
A confident Glenn Irwin remained in the pits but Hickman got to within 0.117s of his time to claim second although O’Halloran promptly took this off him as the chequered flag came out, the gap to Irwin now just 0.041s.
Hickman, a winner at Cadwell in 2014, held on to the remaining front row position with Bridewell, Jackson and Andrew Irwin completed the second row.
Skinner took a good seventh with Vickers holding onto eighth, despite his crash, from Iddon and Mackenzie. Josh Brookes will line up in 13th for this afternoon’s race.
