Tyco BMW’s Christian Iddon was one content rider this evening as he set the fastest time in a rain sodden free practice session at the MCE British Superbike round at Silverstone.
The Stockport native lapped a 2’26.104 and went one second quicker than Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne and cemented himself as the racer to beat this afternoon. It has been a strong opening day for the S1000RR rider, as he was second fastest in the first free practice session too.
He improved his time by three seconds from this morning and is pleased with his pace in very wet conditions. The weather did ease somewhat compared to the torrential down pours in FP1 and Iddon appeared unfazed by the changeable conditions.
“It has been real difficult conditions the amount of rain we had this morning was pretty bad. There was a lot of standing water and you just had to be real careful and there was a lot of aquaplaning going on. We were second this morning, conditions were better in free practice two. It was a good session the second one,” said Iddon at the track.
“As a season it has been a pretty dry one and we didn’t have much to go off. I was out there enjoying the bike. The bike feels good and we have the rain to deal with. The Tyco BMW boys have done a good job and I feel pretty happy on the bike, generally the Superbike we have got when you make a bike into a Superbike they become inherently very stiff and difficult to get a lot of feeling from them and that is something we have always struggled with in the wet for sure and it seems a little bit better today and we have some more sensation from it and I was able to push on a bit more. “
Iddon’s main goal is to make it into the Showdown and he has not yet secured his spot in the top six, but he hopes good results from the triple-header this weekend will mean that he will leave the track as a guaranteed championship contender.
Iddon added: “It is really close, when you have got that many people vying for a few positions it makes it really interesting. Right now we are battling against four or five guys to get into a two or three place slot in the top six – definitely going to be interesting.”
