Having taken two wins and closed to within two points of leader Glenn Irwin at Oulton Park, Jason O’‘Halloran had high hopes of taking over at the top of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship standings at Donington Park this weekend.

However, Sunday proved to be a mixed bag for the McAMS Yamaha rider with a good second place in race two sandwiched by 14th, in the wet, and eighth place finishes. But while he now lies in fourth overall, he’’s still only 19 points off new championship leader Josh Brookes.

The final race was a particularly odd one as he looked on course for another strong finish only for a slight touch when trying to overtake Christian Iddon resulting in the brake guard moving up which then pulled the clutch in.

““Race two today was really good, we came from 12th on the grid to finish second, which was great and race three was going pretty well until the incident,”” said O’Halloran.

““I lost a few places in the middle of the race and I was struggling to find a way past Christian. I just needed to get by as I was losing too much time. I was trying everywhere but the bikes are quite different and the one place I could pass was into McLeans. He knew that as well and blocked me going in there and I clipped him on the way through.”

““When I hit him the brake guard on the left hand side moved up and pulled the clutch in. I didn’’t know it was in though and it took a couple of laps to figure out what was going on –when I got the lever back down the clutch was fried.”

““I was able to get some pace back towards the end, but the clutch kept slipping. I’’m a bit disappointed but we managed to get a couple of positions back in the last couple of laps for a few more points.”

It could well prove to be eight valuable points though just as team-mate Tarran Mackenzie taking the win and denying Brookes more points could be valuable. Rather than being despondent, O’‘Halloran is well aware he’‘s still in title contention with 75 points still up for grabs at Brands.

““The pressure isn’’t on us at Brands now. We have to turn up, get maximum points and see what happens with everyone else. It’‘s not over yet, that’’s for sure.””