After a double top ten finish last time out at
Thruxton, James Ellison showed he will be one to watch during the Bennetts British Superbike Championship season with a maiden podium finish during the second rounds of the season at
Oulton Park.
The 27-year-old, who won the Superbike Cup back in 2004 and spent last season riding in AMA Superbikes, qualified on the third row of the grid at the Cheshire circuit but was faced with a difficult call to make on tyres for race one when light rain started to fall and the initial start was red-flagged after a multi-rider incident at Old Hall.
Having elected to go for a harder compound wet tyre, Ellison struggled through the early stages of the race but was then able to make up places as the race progressed to finish inside the top ten for the third successive race with eighth place.
Hoping for dry weather conditions for race two, Ellison got his wish when the rain stayed away and a fine start saw him quickly into fourth place behind Tom Sykes and HM Plant pairing Leon Haslam and Cal Crutchlow.
Although he lost a place to a recovering Shakey Byrne, Ellison remained in touch with the leaders and was able to take advantage of incidents for Haslam, Sykes and Crutchlow to be second when the race was red-flagged – securing a best ever BSB finish for both himself and the Hydrex Bike Animal Honda team.
"I was a bit disappointed with race one as I knew we had the pace in the dry and in the wet," he told
Crash.net. "The conditions were so difficult and we had a hard decision to make on tyres. Sometimes round Oulton Park, it comes down to luck as to whether you get it right. I chose a slightly harder set which wasn't doing us any favours in the early part of the race, but towards the end, we pulled eighth place.
