Australian records pair of seventh place finishes at Brands Hatch
Honda Racing’s Jason O’Halloran struggled with confidence at Brands Hatch’s sixth round of the 2017 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship, with multiple crashes in the lead up to race day stripping the Australian of momentum.
After qualifying 12th, O’Halloran went onto string together a pair of seventh place finishes on Sunday’s race day, in what was an effort to regain his confidence following a disheartening week on the bike.
“It has been a tough weekend,” said O’Halloran. “I crashed early in FP2 and missed most of the session, so I have struggled to gain momentum from there really. I have had three front-end crashes this week, with two at Cadwell during the test and then one again here, unfortunately when you go down three times in a week you lose a bit of confidence.
“So we have been working on the feeling to get my confidence back. In the second race I finished seventh again, but my race time was better, towards the end I started to close down on the two Kawasaki’s but I didn’t have enough tyre left to really push.”
O’Halloran expressed the importance of salvaging points on a weekend that he had just endured, which he was able to do as he now sits fourth in the championship standings.
“When you’re having a tough weekend it’s key to gain points,” he continued. “Which we have done and we’re now fourth in the standings – so you have to take the positives, sometimes you have good days and others are bad days, but you’ve got to take the positives and come back stronger, which I am sure we can do at Thruxton.”
The next stop of the British Superbike Championship is scheduled for 4-6 August, at Thruxton, marking the seventh round of the series.