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With the Bennetts British Superbike Championship returning to Oulton Park this weekend for round nine of the series, Buildbase Suzuki is looking to build on the form and pace showed at the previous round at Cadwell Park.
Bradley Ray secured his first front row start of the year at the Lincolnshire circuit, and despite bad luck in the races his speed demonstrated the potential the GSX-R1000R possesses, backed up by class-rookie Luke Stapleford’s improved pace and top-10 finish. The pair will be looking to continue that form at Cheshire’s Oulton Park triple-header this weekend.
Richard Cooper’s Superstock 1000 Championship lead stands at 35.5 points, and with two races this weekend, he will be hoping to extend that further and show the superior pace he demonstrated when the series first visited Oulton Park earlier in the season. His pole position time from the May meeting would have placed him 15th on the superbike grid.
Bradley Ray, “Cadwell was bittersweet really. Qualifying on the front row felt really good and it was a big lift that we needed as a team, so to suffer as we did in the races was really disappointing. But as always we looked at the positives and the pace we had, and hopefully we can look back and say Cadwell was a turning point in our season because we made a big step forward. Oulton is a tricky place and probably isn’t best suited to our bike at the moment, but I’m feeling good and aiming for two good performances this weekend.”
Luke Stapleford, “I expected Cadwell to be difficult, so getting into the top-10 was good and I was relatively happy. This weekend will be a test, we struggled at Oulton earlier in the year and our bike typically favours faster, flatter circuits. But I’m hoping to build on the momentum from Cadwell where we made more improvements, have a good Oulton, and hopefully keep building for Assen which I’m hoping will really suit both me and the bike.”
Richard Cooper, “I really hope it’s dry this weekend. Last time we went to Oulton we had a really good weekend, had really good pace in practice and qualifying, and won the race from pole. But the race was in mixed, half and half conditions and we didn’t get to demonstrate the speed we had when it counted. We’ve got two races this time, the bike’s working well, and hopefully we can do that this time and extend the championship lead further.”
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