British Superbike: Scott Redding plays his first trump card at Assen

Scott Redding doesn’t give up: by dominating the first of the three challenges scheduled at the Assen circuit, he closes the gap to championship leader Kyle Ryde and reopens the fight for the British Superbike crown.

The round on Dutch soil of the most competitive national championship in the world has thoroughly shuffled the deck. Kyle Ryde, BSB king for two years, seemed firmly in control, yet here he endured the first assault from the former MotoGP rider. Assen in fact kicks off the Showdown phase—the series’ playoffs—with points boosted compared to the previous eight rounds. With this win, Redding banks 25 points, versus the 18 on offer for victory in all earlier races, cutting the deficit to Kyle Ryde to 68 points. The leader limited the damage by finishing second, but what a struggle...

Superpole rewarded the resilience of Leon Haslam, still blisteringly fast despite his 43 years. But at lights out Scott Redding immediately pulled away, leaving Kyle Ryde in the clutches of Haslam and Honda protégé Ryan Vickers, fresh off his triumphs at Cadwell Park, the final slice of BSB’s regular season. While Redding enjoyed a solitary lead, the trio waged a furious battle, with Haslam and Ryde trading fairing rubs multiple times. Only at the tail end of the seventeen-lap race did Ryde manage to shake off the awkward company, with Leon Haslam still on the podium ahead of Vickers.

Assen is a World Championship-grade track, with characteristics quite different from the typical British circuits that cradle the BSB. Here, the fantastic balance we’d admired in recent rounds was somewhat broken, with Ducati monopolizing the podium. However, Vickers’ Honda finished just 3.7" behind the winner, so nothing like the undisputed supremacy of the Panigale V4 R we’ve become accustomed to in the top championship. On Sunday Assen hosts two more races, with a high risk of rain: Redding, a rain master, wouldn’t want it any other way. BSB is a land of big surprises.

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