Jack Kennedy took the honours in the Quattro Group British Supersport Championship Sprint race at Oulton Park on Saturday and in doing so reclaimed the lead in the title standings.
RS Racing’s Charlie Nesbitt secured the GP2 Championship by 135 points with his sixth place finish.
Kennedy took the initial lead on the HEL Performance/Bournemouth Kawasaki and immediately opened up a gap over the rest of the field but Ben Currie soon began to peg him back on the Gearlink Kawasaki. Indeed, after three laps, the championship rivals were separated by just 0.148s apart.
They’d opened up a three-second gap over the battling quartet of Lee Johnston, Bradley Perie, Harry Truelove and Nesbitt, the latter again the leading GP2 runner on his RS Racing Kalex. Pole man Scott Swann was running in a strong seventh and was battling with Dutch regular Jamie van Sikkelerus.
At half race distance, Kennedy continued to lead Currie, the gap having doubled to 0.395s, but there was change further back with Truelove now having moved up to third at the expense of Johnston.
Behind them, no less than six riders were disputing seventh with Swann continuing to lead the way from GP2 runners Dan Jones and Jamie Perrin and fellow 600cc men Korie McGreevy, Sikkelerus and Rhys Irwin.
In the final third of the race, Kennedy and Currie continued to circulate in close formation but in the closing stages the Australian dropped back and that allowed former double champion Kennedy to win by a comfortable 3.5s with Truelove a similar distance behind in third on the Truelove Brothers Racing Yamaha.
Johnston and Perie both lost ground in the title race as they finished fourth and fifth respectively but sixth place overall and the class win enabled Nesbitt to clinch the GP2 title.
He was followed home in the race by Jones, Perrin and Mason Law with van Sikkelerus the sixth 600cc machine past the chequered flag in tenth overall.
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