The MCE British Superbike Championship came to a thrilling conclusion at Brands Hatch at the weekend.
There were thrills and spills aplenty and for Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne the strive for thrive for completed with a race to spare.
He did it the hard way though, going into the race with a 27 point lead, he dropped down to 11th before working is way back through to finish sixth, just a place behind Leon Haslam to win the title with a race to spare.
In the final race of the season, he once again dropped down to tenth before the race was stopped. When we eventually got the showpiece restarted, he went purple for times and showed his intent by carving his way through from tenth to third. Finishing the season on the podium for the PBM team.
Over in the super sport class Bradley Ray was unlucky not to take victory after an excellent ding dong battle with champion Tarran Mackenzie. He has cleared off in the first part of the race, but with a crash seeing a restart, they had an excellent battle with Mackenzie taking victory at the final corner of the final lap.
Ray has underlined his talent and finishing third in the Supersport class in his first season shows that in 2017, he will be a title challenger for sure.
Ross Twyman was unfortunate to come off after a top ten finish on Saturday. Ryan Dixon finished his season strongly with points in the final race of the season.
Tom Ward was unlucky not to finish the Superstock 600 race, when he came off whilst working his way through the field.
Rob McNealy also finished the season strongly in the Superstock 1000 class, finishing in ninth place on a drying track, having dived with race winner 44-year-old Michael Rutter in the early stages.
2016 has once again been an entertaining spectacle for the fans, of BSB and support classes and everyone is already looking forward to 2017 getting underway in March.
Images courtesy of www.psp-images.co.uk