It was like watching a Western rodeo at Silverstone on Easter Monday. The British Superbike riders who struggled to hang on to their wildly bucking broncos were out of the saddle more often than not.

A damp but drying track had the top racers slipping and sliding at breakneck pace as they tried to corral their powerful machines to lay down the awesome power generated by highly tuned engines.

And it was the old hands who came out with guns blazing to thrill the crowd with a virtual high noon confrontation.

Pre-season pundits had thought that the championship would be a two-horse race between former team-mates and now arch rivals - the 35-year-old John Reynolds on the Reve Red Bull Ducati and James Haydon, the 27-year-old who swapped camps to ride a Yamaha R7 for the Virgin Mobile Aiwa team.

But the oldest gunslinger in town, Steve Hislop, now at the ripe old racing age of 39, was mounted on a Monstermob Ducati - the same bike that Neil Hodgson used to win last year's title. He emerged as the real threat to Reynolds's dream of recapturing the British Superbike title he last held nine years ago.

Hislop, also a previous BSB title-holder, has turned into a one-man posse, chasing down the points-leading Reynolds.

Race One had hardly got going when the Kawasaki of Steve Plater spat him off at Becketts, and the race was stopped to attend the unconscious, but otherwise uninjured rider.

Once they had sorted themselves out from the restart, Hislop powered from third to take the lead and Reynolds went off in hot pursuit.

A battered and bruised Haydon, who had a big let-off during Sunday practice when his bike ended up skidding along the Tarmac with his helmeted head wedged underneath, was left to do battle with the Clarion Suzuki of John Crawford and the Red Bull Ducati of Sean Emmett. Meanwhile,at the front, Hislop made the fatal error of going into the hairpin too hot and, out-braking