Christian Iddon “starting to understand” Kawasaki BSB bike despite crashes

Christian Iddon was “really upset with myself” for crashing twice on Sunday at the Oulton Park BSB but that he’s improving his understanding of the Kawasaki ZX-10RR he’s jumped on for the first time in 2025.

Iddon was running in the group behind the dominant Bradley Ray when he crashed out of Race 1 at Oulton Park, this following a crash in qualifying that happened on a lap where he wasn’t pushing.

“I was really upset with myself because when I crashed in qualifying it wasn’t on a push lap, I’d run a bit deep in the corner and was literally just rolling to get back [on the racing line] and folded the front, and actually it broke the frame so it was a massive amount of work for the team,” Iddon told Crash.net after the cancellation of Race 3 at Oulton Park was announced.

“In [Race 1] I actually felt super-strong, I felt really good, comfortable. If you look at the lap chart, we were the strongest of anyone apart from Brad [Bradley Ray] up until the point I crashed.

“I was one of the maddest I’ve ever been at myself for making that mistake. It’s always a rider’s fault when you crash, but I genuinely didn’t feel like I’d changed much.

“But obviously I did something wrong, so I was really angry; mainly because I’d really started to trust and front and, after two crashes where I didn’t really understand what had gone, on I knew it would have a little bit of a knock-on [effect].

“And it did [on Monday], to be fair, I didn’t feel with it in Warm Up, and then I just rode tight in [Race 2].”

Christian Iddon improving understanding

Despite the crashes at Oulton Park, Iddon felt that he was improving his understanding of the Kawasaki with time.

Having found a dramatically different feeling with the ZX-10RR at the Donington test compared to the previous Navarra test, Iddon said he had a similar experience at Oulton Park, but now believed it to be about his lack of experience with the bike.

“To be fair, we had a similar – but not as bad – experience, really,” Iddon said.

“I think a lot of it is me trying to understand the bike.

“We’re not changing massive things, but the things we have changed are small but [make] a reasonably big difference. If anything, we are doing what I would call really fine tuning, but [it’s having] a reasonably strong effect.

“We had some ideas of things to change for the final race – we’re talking clickers, but I actually think they would have made quite a difference because the little things do seem to make quite a difference.

“We’ll roll on to Donington now, take what I think is a reasonably good feeling. Like I said, I was really angry with myself for [the Race 1 crash], but it’s a part of the game.”

Iddon added that he at least feels he is progressing with his understanding of the ZX-10RR.

“I do think I’m starting to understand the bike more,” he said.

“I think there are some things that I can change to try and improve it. But lap-on-lap, it’s like anything, you learn.

“Not necessarily that it would make me super-faster but hopefully to improve the consistency and stuff.”