Tommy Bridewell claimed his third pole position of the British Superbike Championship season on Saturday afternoon with the BeerMonster Ducati rider taking the top spot at Oulton Park ahead of team-mate Glenn Irwin.

The gap between the championship leaders was just 0.006s and it was the perfect start to an emotional weekend for the team after the recent passing of team owner Paul Bird.

Kyle Ryde (LAMI OMG Racing Yamaha) set the third quickest lap to join them on the front row for this afternoon’s 12 lap race.

Leon Haslam (ROKiT BMW Motorrad Team) set the initial pace with a 1’34.377, which put him three tenths of a second clear of Christian Iddon (Oxford Products Ducati) but Irwin upstaged everyone with his first flying lap being 1’33.764.

That put him almost half a second clear of new second place rider Storm Stacey, the Starline Racing Kawasaki rider having come through Q1.

Josh Brookes (FHO Racing BMW) slotted into third ahead of Lee Jackson (Cheshire Mouldings Kawasaki), Bridewell and Haslam who found himself bumped back down to sixth and a lap later 2015 and 2020 Champion Brookes moved up to second although he was still 0.449s adrift of Irwin.

However, Bridewell then went quickest with a lap of 1’33.758, 0.006s quicker than his team-mate Irwin and just a tenth of a second outside the lap record. Ryde moved up to third at the expense of Brookes whilst Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) jumped up the order to sixth with four minutes of the session to go.

The top three remained unchallenged but a late lap of 1’34.150 put Haslam back up to fourth ahead of Brookes and Stacey and it was O’Halloran, Jackson, Ryan Vickers on the second OMG machine and Iddon who completed the top ten.