Honda Racing’s Jason O’Halloran returned to the podium this weekend as he picked up a third-place finish in the second race of the day at Assen.
O’Halloran had picked up a fifth place finish in race one and was rewarded for setting the fastest lap of that race with pole position for race two.
Dicing with the leading group throughout the 18 laps, the Aussie never dropped below fourth place. By the end of the ninth lap he found himself in third place and had his eyes set on Shane Byrne and Leon Haslam.
Although he could not catch the two title contenders, O’Halloran was more than happy to settle for third and the final step of the podium.
A delighted O’Halloran said: “It was another podium for us in race two, I think that’s now our seventh this year, and I’m really pleased with it. We had a good solid race and we led parts of it and it was really tight. When someone came up behind me and passed me I tried to counter attack straightaway on the same lap.
“We had to use the hard tyre this weekend because of the weather conditions and the only other place we’ve used it was in the second race at Silverstone. We’re a little bit inexperienced with it but we’ve seen we can get some good times out of it and we can do some work with it as we head to Brands Hatch and hopefully get three podiums there.”
O’Halloran currently finds himself fifth in the championship but he is now only four points behind fourth-place man James Ellison – and only 10 points behind his teammate Dan Linfoot.
With three races taking place at the Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit, O’Halloran will be determined to finish as high as he can in the standings.
The final round of the 2016 season gets underway on Friday, October 14.