Having dominated proceedings from rounds three to six of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship, to comfortably take over the lead in the title standings, it’s fair to say since then, things haven’t gone to plan for Jason O’Halloran.

  With his last podium coming at Thruxton at the beginning of August, the McAMS Yamaha ace has had to watch Bradley Ray eat into his points lead and then overtake him with Snetterton proving to be another frustrating weekend.
 
"It's been a hard weekend, we had some issues beyond our control on Friday and that kind of ran in to Saturday morning, so we didn't get any dry laps until the first race,” he explained.
 
Having failed to make it into the Superpicks Top 12, the legacy of his issues on Friday, O’Halloran had to go into Q1, which he failed to advance from and started from a lowly 21st on the grid for Saturday’s race with 12th place the ultimate outcome.
 
“In that race I got a good lap time for Sunday’s first race, but we tried something with the bike and it didn't quite work, I was just circulating not really racing.”
 
Ninth was the result then but the Australian and his team made some further changes for the final race which clearly worked as started to look a lot more like his old self. Although not a podium, fifth was a lot more competitive showing from O’Halloran.
 
“We changed the bike completely for the last race and felt the best I'd felt all weekend. We have something to work with there now. We are fortunate with the Showdown as while we've not had the best weekend we're only 13 points down. The championship starts at Oulton Park and we head there on a positive note not a negative so we'll come out fighting at Oulton."
 
Ray’s run of wins, which includes four victories in the last six races, means he starts the Showdown with 61 podium points but O’Halloran’s strong run earlier in the season saw him rack up 48 of his own so there literally is everything to play for now.