THOMAS BRIDEWELL – SUZUKI SAVIOUR
Tommy Bridewell has been Suzuki’s all-star man in BSB this year aboard the Halsall/ Bennetts GSX-R1000, beating much faster, newer, more powerful machinery with his little stubby digits. Here are his parting words on the old girl…
“The thing with BSB is there’s certain stuff we can change to make the bike as competitive as it is, with swingarms, stiffer frames, adding struts, different engine specs – there’s so much we change – but to be fair, it’s still a very good all-round package. The Suzuki’s chassis has always been notoriously good, and with the permitted BSB engine spec, we can get some decent horsepower – I expect we’re around 208bhp, so we are down because, obviously, you look at the newmachines that are coming out the crate with 215bhp after a few tweaks.
“At Brands Hatch last year, my fastest lap was a 1m26.2. This year on the Suzuki I did a 1m25.3. Don’t ask me why but we’re going to circuits this year and setting lap times faster, or the same speeds, than any Suzuki has ever been round them – if you go by the new BSB rules. If you go by the old rules, so full electronics and full WSB engines, we’re around a few tenths off. If you look at it like that, it’s fucking good going really. It shows how strong the team is and how strong we’ve made the bike, and how strong a rider I am really. Development does end, it’s not an endless stream. That bike is as good as it’s going to get.
“Our slight disadvantage at the current stage is we aren’t able to run fly-by-wire. If I’m honest, that’s the big thing for us, as it limits us in areas such as engine braking and engine bleed, so corner entry. Fly-by-wire allows more scope for adjusting and controlling the Motec. The problem with all of this is it is an older bike and yet we’ve still shown how capable it is. When the new bike comes out, it’s still going to take some time to get as competitive as what we’ve got right now.”
So when are you riding the all-new GSX-R1000? Are you sorted for next year? “Yeah, nearly there.” Just money, then? “Bloody hell, that’ll take some sorting! I would like to stay on board for next year with Martin [Halsall, team boss] and we’re very close to confirming that, I’d like to think. We should be getting a new bike early September and I think the plan is to test straight away, out to Spain in November and just get some info. We won’t be going out to set lap records but just to get some understanding of direction to go in the winter period. It’s exciting.”