Mine’s a McPint
John McGuinness bagged a fifth and a seventh on his Ducati TriOptions Cup debut. Starved of any road racing in 2020, the 23-time TT winner, who has set up his own team to compete in the championship, took advantage of this short circuit opportunity with two competitive rides. Josh Day won both races at Donington.
It was a weekend of two halves for Danny Kent on his return to motorcycle racing. Riding in the National Superstock 1000 class, the former Moto3 world champion secured pole position on Saturday, before clinching the final podium spot in the opening race. He crashed out of fourth on the last lap of race two.
A weekend which promised so much for McAMS Yamaha turned out to be one of mixed results.
Jason O’Halloran dominated practice and qualifying, but a poor start and close contact with other riders left him eighth in Race 1. The Aussie, who set the pace in qualifying, did, however, recover well to secure two third places, but given his pace in testing and throughout, the weekend looked set to deliver more.
“I’m happy, last year I left round one with no points, whilst this time we’ve left with a good bunch of points,” O’Halloran told MCN. “We definitely have the speed to win, but we just need to put the races together. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at the front like this, last
Tommy Bridewell worked closely with his tight-knit Oxford Products Racing team to overcome problems with the Ducati V4R allowing him to take a dominant victory in the third and final race at Donington. Bridewell stormed to victory after leading for much of the race, having already powered through to fifth in Race 1. It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing though, with the team having to adapt to the new tyre which caused Josh Brookes so many problems (see Ducati woes, p62). “You always think that coming back for another year, we have last year’s data, but it just did not work,” Bridewell told MCN. “The new tyres caught us off guard a little bit, but the team worked, really, really hard to