Jake Dixon finished in the top ten in the opening World Superbike race of the weekend at Cremona this afternoon.

The day got off to a positive start with warm, sunny conditions for the morning’s practice and with Dixon particularly impressive, setting a 1’27.937 to finish the session third fastest.

Unfortunately, the Dover born rider was unable to fully capitalise on that potential in the subsequent Superpole session. An early crash interrupted his first run, and although he was able to return to the track for a second run in the final minutes of the already brief 15-minute session, he could not replicate the strong lap time he had set in FP3. A 1’28.755 ultimately put him eighteenth on the grid.

When Race one got underway, Dixon made an excellent start and was already up to eleventh by the end of lap one. After losing one position in the early stages, Jake worked his way back through the field, passing Manzi and Gardner before moving up into ninth.

From there, the Honda rider maintained a strong pace and spent much of the second half of the race challenging Bassani for eighth. In the closing stages, Dixon also came under increasing pressure from Bautista but defended well to secure ninth place across the line. Today’s result marks Jake’s strongest race performance so far this season.

Speaking after race one, Dixon said: “Unfortunately, I made a mistake in qualifying, so first I want to apologise to the team because they’ve given me a great package this weekend with which to fight around sixth or seventh position.

“Starting so far back, I gave myself a lot of work to do in Race 1, but I did the best I could. I had a little more pace, but I just couldn’t get past Bassani and Locatelli. It was frustrating because I had better pace, but in the one area where I needed to be strong to make a move, I wasn’t strong enough. I tried everything, but towards the end I also had to fend off Bautista.

“It was a fun race though, coming from where we did, and I enjoyed it. Tomorrow in the Superpole Race it will have to be full attack mode because we need to try to get into the top nine so that we can start further forward in Race 2. Let’s see what we can do.”