It was a return to the podium for Storm Stacey at Oulton Park, but it could have been so much more.
Storm Stacey's weekend at Oulton Park took a drastic turn from just getting out of Q1 to standing on the podium on Sunday evening.
After a dry race on Saturday the wet weather that came overnight for two races on Sunday suited Stacey. The LKQ Euro Car Parts Kawasaki rider is known as a wet-weather rider, having won in similar conditions at Snetterton earlier in the year.
At the end of the first race of the day, Stacey crossed the line in eighth place. However, after starting from seventh for the final race of the weekend the #79 quickly hit the front in the wet conditions. Just like at Snetterton Stacey was showing his skill in the wet conditions.
“The wet conditions seemed to level it out quite a lot for me," Stacey said after Race Three. "When it rains I definitely don’t pull a face, I definitely pull a good face.”
Stacey had a 16-second lead over the field in Race Three until the Red Flag was shown and the race was paused. The Kawasaki rider did start from pole when the race restarted but the rest of the field was with him once again.
“I’m getting a bit tired of the big lead and then red flag," Stacey stated. "Being fourteen seconds ahead in the first half was definitely boosting my ego a lot and I felt pretty comfortable with it, but I do wish in that second half I had gone for an intermediate rear because I’d have literally taken off where we had left off and had carried on.
"But you never know how the weather is going to go, unfortunately, so we took the safe bet with the soft wet and the rear seemed to be quite all over the place, but third place isn’t bad”.
With two rounds and six races left of the 2024 British Superbike season, Stacey made it no secret that he wants a lot more rain.
“I hope it’s wet, I really hope it’s wet! Unfortunately in the dry - we just don’t seem to have the speed, it’s more overall speed on the straight line. The acceleration of the bike is really good but the actual going of the bike is not so good, so coming into Donington and Brands we just need to utilise on the bits where we’re strong - the last sector’s always strong for me at Donington, so somewhere I’m probably going to push quite hard and try and make a bit more time in the middle sector is somewhere I struggle - so I’ll probably follow Kyle!”
