British SuperBike Championship - Mallory Park
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GSE Racing's Neil Hodgson added yet another victory to his ever growing
British Superbike Championship tally this weekend at Mallory Park and followed this up with a hard-fought fourth in race two. Niall Mackenzie, who
had struggled during qualifying, improved as the day progressed and finished
in ninth and seventh place respectively, strengthening his position in this year's series.
Having qualified on pole for the sixth time this season, Hodgson made a good start to race one, slotting into second place behind Chris Walker and shadowing him throughout the early stages of the race. As Walker upped the pace, Hodgson was able to stay with him easily and the pair pulled a comfortable margin on the chasing pack. The championship leader showed his front wheel to the Suzuki rider on numerous occasions around the 1.3-mile Leicestershire circuit and when Walker made a mistake on lap 24 at the Esses, Hodgson was close enough to seize the initiative and take the lead before the hairpin. The INS Ducati rider then pulled a safe margin in the closing two laps to take his sixth British Superbike victory of the season and increase his lead at the top of the championship table. "It was a really good race between myself and Chris out there," he said, "I felt like I had the superior package with the INS Ducati, because I wasn't struggling for grip and was in the right place to make a good, clean overtaking manoeuvre and take the lead. It's great to get another win under my belt!" Race two was full of drama. Red-flagged after 12 laps because Marty Craggill slid off at the hairpin, the race would be a two-part affair with the result decided on aggregate timings. Hodgson was fourth into Gerrard's Bend behind Walker, Reynolds and Haydon, and proceeded to close down the leading trio with each lap. The 26-year-old lined up a pass on Haydon at Gerrards with just three laps remaining and made it stick on the next lap to move into third on the track. However, Hodgson finished the race in fourth on aggregate time, missing out on a podium position by just one tenth of a second. "It was frustrating to have the race stopped after 12 laps because I was just sitting there biding my time, watching the others wearing their tyres out. I was conserving mine in order to be strongest during the second half of the race, so it didn't really play into my hands, because I had it all to do on the re-start. That's racing though and it's still great to come away from Mallory with another victory which keeps my championship campaign firmly on course." Anthony Gobert scored a 13th and 17th. Points |