Shock win for Hickman at Silverstone

Author: Oli Rushby Pics: Impact Images Posted: 10 Apr 2016

Peter Hickman stormed to a shock British Superbike victory in today’s second race at Silverstone, holding off a late attack by Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne to take the first dry win of his career.

Hickman, 29, went into the race brimming with confidence after fighting through from 16^th on the grid in race one to hassle the leaders before a terminal engine fault cruelly ruled him out with a handful of laps to go. 

First race winner Michael Laverty took the early lead before a mysterious spray of water saw him back off under the impression it was raining. By the time he’d realised conditions were fine, he’d fallen back to seventh.

Laverty’s issues had slowed Hickman, bringing the pair back in to the chasing pack led by Byrne and Iddon.

Byrne pushed the JG Speedfit Kawasaki rider on the last lap and took advantage of a slight mistake into Brooklands before holding his line into the penultimate turn but a combination of the drive of Hickman’s ZX-10R and a massive slide for the Ducati rider saw Hickman clinch victory by just 0.099sec.

Jason O’Halloran fought off a hard-charging Leon Haslam to take a strong fourth place with Michael Laverty completing the top six having regrouped after his issues.

Youngster Lee Jackson took a strong seventh place on the Buildbase BMW ahead of the third JG Speedfit Kawasaki of James Ellison. Dan Linfoot took ninth with Luke Mossey rounding out the top ten.

“We knew we were going to be strong after our pace in the first race but even that was a surprise,” said Hickman. “We started 16^th in that one so we were a long way back and 3.5 seconds off the lead after the first lap so to be able to pull all that back was phenomenal but then I had a technical problem.

“I tried to keep my cool and not make any mistakes, when Michael came through I thought I’d follow him for a few laps but then he had some sort of problem and dropped back. The last few laps were quite intimidating with Shakey behind and I ran a little deep into Brooklands and he snuck underneath but there was no way I was doing all that work and not winning so I just pinned it right from the apex!”