Kyle Ryde will line up in pole position for this afternoon’s Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Oulton Park after claiming pole position on the Rich Energy OMG Racing Yamaha ahead of Josh Brookes (MCE Ducati) and Luke Mossey (TAG Racing Honda) in a wet qualifying session at the Cheshire venue.
Light, consistent rain all around the lap led to a short delay to proceedings and with a wet surface in the final sector, in particularly at Druids, lap times were considerably slower that what they had been for the rest of the meeting.
It was Danny Kent, Tom Sykes, Mossey, Andrew Irwin, Storm Stacey and Brookes who advanced from an extremely slippery Q1 with Kent setting the early pace on his Buildbase Suzuki from Leon Haslam (VisionTrack Kawasaki) and Ryan Vickers (FHO Racing BMW) in the crucial Q2 session where full wets were the order of the day for the 18 riders on track.
Kent was the first rider into the 1’49s but he was pushed down to second midway through the session by Sykes who was in the 1’48s but the pace was quickening with each and every lap and with five minutes to go, the order was Vickers with a 1’47.417s lap followed by Christian Iddon (Buildbase Suzuki), Bradley Ray (Rich Energy OMG Racing Yamaha), Mossey, Peter Hickman on the second FHO Racing machine and Sykes.
Brookes took full advantage of his earlier track time to go quickest with four minutes to go but positions were changing all the time as track conditions improved and Ray and Vickers quickly pushed Brookes back to third. Teammate Sykes slotted into fourth with three minutes remaining.
Next time around the MCE Ducati pairing went one-two and were the first riders to lap in the 1’45s bracket but Vickers strong pace continued as he went 0.054s quicker than Brookes to take over the top spot once more with just over a minute to go.
Sykes briefly went fastest before Brookes took over once more by more than a second with a lap of 1’43.793s but in the dying moments, Ryde came from nowhere to take pole after lapping at 1’43.086s.
Brookes held onto second from Mossey with late laps promoting Rory Skinner (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) and Hickman up to fourth and fifth whilst the latter’s team-mate Vickers slotted into sixth.
Ray, Andrew Irwin (Synetiq BMW), championship leader Glenn Irwin (Honda Racing) and Danny Buchan (Synetiq BMW) completed the top ten but Sykes slipped back to 11th with Haslam in 12th and Tommy Bridewell back in 16th on the Oxford Products Ducati.
