HM Plant Honda rider Leon Haslam has been excluded from the second Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Oulton P🃏ark following his incident with Tom Sykes while dicing for victory.

The pair made contact at Hi🐬zzies on lap eleven when Haslam tried to go down the inside of his ri๊val into the right-hander of the chicane, but succeeded only in hitting the Rizla Suzuki and sending Sykes tumbling to the ground and into retirement.

Haslam himself also ran wide and slipped down to fifth place, although he was then classified in fourth place when the race was red-flagged after a fall for team-mate Cal 🅺Crutchlow at Druids.

A🅷t that point, the incident involving Sykes went before t🐼he Clerk of the Course with Sykes keen not to be drawn on what happened while the discussions were ongoing.

"I don't want to get too involved with it," he said. "As soon as I picked myself up o🌌ff the deck, there were marshalls making comments about what he'd done but at the end of the day, he knows he made 🅘a mistake and it's being looked into.

"Everyone has s𝕴een it and knows what happened, so I'll lꩲeave it to other people to decide."

Af💫ter reviewing video evidence and speaking to both riders, the decision was taken to exclude Haslam for careless riding under article B1.7 of the MCRCB regulations.

The HM Plant team lodged an appeal into the incident, with hopeful of being reinstated into the results. However, the decision🐬 of the Clerk of the Cou🍎rse was deemed to be correct, and the HM Plant man was stripped of the position.

"Tom is a competitive rider and we are racing; people will touch," Haslam had s𒁏aid while waiting for his appeal to be heard. "At Thruxton, he clipped the rear end of me as we changed dire♚ction and here I tried to avoid him and move out of the way as he came across but he hit the back wheel of me again as we went through.

"It's frustrating on that sidไe and Tom knows the score. He kno𒁏ws it is racing and is probably as frustrated as me."