The podium tally continued to grow for Honda Racing as Dan Linfoot landed his all-new Fireblade on the podium during today’s opening MCE British Superbike Championship race at Brands Hatch – bringing the teams total to four podiums so far this season.

Race one was a dramatic affair and starting from the front row of the grid in third place, it was clear Linfoot meant business as the flag dropped. Keeping well within the front group, the Yorkshireman was in second place when the safety car was deployed on lap six following an incident on track.

As the race resumed Linfoot instantly made his move and launched into the lead, but with a chasing pack close behind battle commenced. Trading places with his BSB rivals the 29-year-old swapped between the lead and second place, and it was in the final stages when Shane Byrne took the lead at Surtees. With changing weather conditions the race was red flagged with two laps to go and Linfoot took his first podium of the season in second place.

Scoring the fastest lap in race one (1:25.490), Linfoot lined up in Pole position ahead of the second race of the day. However his race came to an early end on the fourth lap after losing the front of his CBR at Druids while running in third place. Linfoot remains tenth in the overall championship standings and is just one point away from ninth place.

On the other side of the garage it has been a mixed weekend for Jason O’Halloran, who leaves Brands Hatch with two solid seventh place finishes under his belt. Collecting all-important Showdown points, The O’Show has moved up in the championship standings and is now fourth overall, with just three rounds left (Thruxton, Cadwell Park and Silverstone) until the Showdown decider.

The Honda Racing team will now prepare for the seventh round of the BSB championship, which takes place at the fast Thruxton circuit in Hampshire on 4-6 August, while Linfoot and O’Halloran head to Japan to take part in the Suzuka 8 Hours.


Well the weekend didn’t really turn out the way I wanted it to in the end. Race one was great, I scored my first podium of the season and felt really good with the Fireblade and my confidence was up. Also setting the fastest lap and starting from pole was positive, so we have that under our belts now. Race two, well there’s not much to say really, of course I am disappointed. I was trying to chase Josh and Shakey, they passed me and I tried to continue my pace and thought if these are the faster guys, I’ll settle here and keep my pace as much as I can. But as I entered Druids I lost the front and went down, I didn’t think I did anything massively different to what I had before, but it’s just one of those things. In hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have tried to push and just settled with fourth or fifth to get some more points, but hindsight is a wonderful thing! But onto Thruxton now, I’ve got the taste of the podium now, so will be keen to get back there soon.
Dan Linfoot / #4  
   
It has been a tough weekend, I crashed early in FP2 and missed most of the session, so 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. When you’re having a tough weekend it’s key to gain points, 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.
Jason O'Halloran / #22  
   
It really has been a mixed weekend for us here at Brands Hatch; we had Dan on the podium in race one, taking his first podium of the year and showing his potential on the Fireblade. Race two was such a blow and I know of course he’s disappointed with crashing out, he had the Pole position, was riding strong and pushing with the lead group. But we have made progress there so we will continue to build and I am sure it won’t be the last time we see him on the podium this year! Jason, you know fair play to him. He came through from the fourth row in race one to finish seventh and in race two, if he’d had some more laps I know he would have been in with Mossey and Haslam. But it just goes to show how important the whole weekend is, he has been on the back-foot and we’ve struggled to capitalise from previous events and positions. We’re now looking forward to Thruxton, both Dan and Jason have gone well there in the past so hopefully it will come together for the whole team. In between that we have the Suzuka 8 Hours and I wish the guys good luck there and a safe trip.
Havier Beltran - Honda Racing team manager