Dean Hipwell unhappy with shortened race

Hipwell competed aboard the Selective Networks BMW in the National Superstock 1000 Championship and finished 12th in Sunday’s race, collecting just four championship points.

Friday’s two free practice sessions once again saw Hipwell struggle with set up issues and unable to finish higher than 12th quickest after the second session. Changes were made to improve the handling ready for Saturday’s qualifying session.

Saturday proved to be a let down for Hipwell as just after the Selective Networks team had put a new tyre in with a few minutes of the session remaining the quick shift linkage broke.

Due to an incident in the previous race the start was delayed and the number of laps reduced to 12. Hipwell dropped from 13th to 14th on the first lap.

He was sandwiched between the BMW’s of Barry Teasdale and Jordan Rushby with less a second covering all three. The three riders remained in this position until the fifth lap when he overtook Rushby and opened up a gap of three tenths of a second to move back into 13th.

Hipwell having been held up by Rushby now found himself just over a second behind the Suzuki of Leon Jeacock. Over the next five laps he increased his lead over Rushby to over three seconds and was now two tenths of a second adrift of Jeacock.

On the tenth lap Hipwell was promoted to 12th place with the demise of Keith Farmer who was in second. Jeacock had overtaken the BMW of Ben Godfrey on this lap which saw Hipwell now two tenths of a second behind Godfrey. Over the remaining two laps Hipwell gradually closed this gap down to nine hundredths of a second as they crossed the finishing line. Hipwell was not happy as he said he was sure that if the race hadn’t been shortened he would have passed the two riders in front.