British Superbikes, Navarra - Vickers: "I didn’t want to lose it on the last corner like an idiot!”

It was double delight for Ryan Vickers, after pulling away for a fairly dominant race one win, the second at the Circuito de Navarra was less straightforward.

Beginning sixth - there was little pressure leading to a fast lap in race one until he made his, late break on the penultimate lap - which lead to a convincing win - there was immediate avoidance needed to move around an out of shape Rory Skinner, but despite that the Norfolk man still took an early third for OMG Grilla.

• 2024 British Superbikes: Navarra - Race Results (1)
• 2024 British Superbikes: Navarra - Race Results (2)

The Yamaha man waited patiently and moved into second, before another well timed move in a sequence starting from the end of the lap through to turn one, saw him in the lead again.

This time Vickers knew his bike and pulled away, but all his hard work was almost undone on the final lap.

Vickers credited his performance with the strategy devised between himself and the team - no changes.

“I did a similar strategy to race one and we actually decided in the garage that we wasn’t going to change the bike at all from race one to two.

I think we all sort of decided that I’d probably benefit a little bit from just learning to ride the bike myself a bit better - and that’s exactly what I did.

The execute plan worked perfectly bringing the #7 his first ever BSB career double win, but there was a late scare.

Vickers explained: “the last lap I looked at my pit board and I had plus zero. So I thought ‘right I’ve got to do a really good lap here’ and I didn’t want to defend and slow up the pace ‘cause if I did have a little bit of a gap I didn’t want to lose it.”

After a near perfect race, the last corner saw Vickers surprisingly sideways, looking certain to crash, before, incredibly, he pulled the bike back up as his front tyre fought with him to regain his balance and still take the chequered flag in first.

Vickers detailed the event: “ Got through to the last left and I was like ‘right, I’ve done the whole lap now, just defend the last corner because I don’t want to lose it on the last corner like an idiot’ - and I nearly did!”

“That was because I defended and went in at the same pace and was a little bit and was a little bit tighter, it’s just the nature of the corner really because it’s uphill, you get a load of front tyre”.

Vickers comes away from Spain with the maximum points available, 36, and a very early championship ahead of the next round in Oulton Park.