Brookes closes BSB championship gap to Redding with win

Full BSB Race 1 results at Brands Hatch

Josh Brookes has claimed victory in the restarted opener of the 2019 Bennetts British Superbike championship decider to cutdown Scott Redding’s lead in the standings to 19 points.

The initial race was halted by a red flag midway through lap seven following a three-rider incident involving Joe Francis, James Ellison and Ryan Vickers. Brookes had led the early laps with Redding, recovering from a poor start, down in seventh place.

At the start of the 12-lap rerun, Brookes bolted into the lead once again with Redding scrapping for seventh position.

Brookes held off a race-long charge from Tommy Bridewell to clinch victory by 2.256s which sees the Oxford Racing Ducati rider’s BSB title hopes ended with the Wiltshire rider needing to win the opener.

Redding charged through to third place to complete the rostrum and if he repeats the result in both of tomorrow’s races he will seal the BSB title regardless of what Brookes can produce.

Tyco BMW’s Christian Iddon had to settle for fourth place after missing out on the rostrum by seven-tenths of a second with Danny Buchan in fifth place for FS-3 Racing Kawasaki and Jason O’Halloran in sixth place for McAMS Yamaha.

Peter Hickman had to settle for seventh place after dropping off the front-running pack for Smiths Racing BMW but stayed comfortably ahead of Honda’s Xavi Fores.

With Andrew Irwin in ninth place for Honda, Taylor Mackenzie (Tyco BMW) beat younger brother Tarran Mackenzie (McAMS Yamaha) to 10^th place.