The MCE British Superbike Championship will come down to the final round of the season at Brands Hatch for Kent’s own Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne. 

It promises to be another exciting end to the season as Byrne targets his fifth BSB title in front of his home crowd, having netted a double podium at Assen with a brace of second places last weekend.

After claiming pole position on the factory-backed Be Wiser Insurance Ducati Panigale R for the first 18-lap race, a solid start saw Byrne complete the first lap in third place but this became second on lap four when he moved ahead of Luke Mossey. The leading six riders were running in close formation and it was on lap seven when the Sittingbourne rider hit the front for the first time for Paul Bird’s Penrith-based team.

As the race wore on, it became a head to head battle between Shakey and main championship rival Haslam with the duo pulling away from the battle behind. Haslam took the lead at the first corner on the final lap and he held on for the win although it was mightily close with Shakey crossing the line just 0.01s behind.

The 39-year-old had to start the second race from sixth and the second row of the grid and life became very difficult when a bad start saw him languishing in 12th at the end of the first lap. By half race distance, he’d moved up to seventh but overtaking manoeuvres were hard to find and it was only in the final third of the race that he started to challenge for the podium. However, this he duly did and he grabbed second on the penultimate lap to ensure he still leads the championship going into the final round in two weeks’ time.

Team-mate Glenn Irwin, meanwhile, got more points on the board in his maiden BSB season and he worked hard for 11th place in race one after slipping back to 15th in the early part of the race. However, the Carrickfergus rider continued to ride hard throughout and just when 12th looked like it would be the end result, a good last lap pass on Christian Iddon gave him a deserved 11th at the chequered flag.

Despite the result, the 26-year-old was back in 17th on the grid for the second encounter and like team leader Byrne, he found it hard to make progress through the field. Stuck in 15th for much of the race, a late rally saw Irwin move up to 12th and this was where he finished aboard the Be Wiser Insurance Ducati Panigale R to maintain the same position in the championship standings.

Speaking after the weekend,  Byrne said: “I was happy enough with second in the first race especially as we proved we’re as fast on the harder SC1 tyre as we are the SC0. Leon’s made no secret of the fact that he prefers the SC1 but we raced with him all the way and only lost by a hundredth of a second. There were some points on the track where we were strong and some where we weren’t as strong so we looked at rectifying that for race two although it was a bit of a surprise to be in sixth and on the second row.

“It wasn’t the ideal place to be and, unfortunately, I made a really bad start which made it hard work from the word go. I got boxed in and was way back whilst it also took me what seemed like ages to get by Richard Cooper. I struggled to find a way by but once I did I got through behind Leon although he was riding really well, controlling the race from the front. I needed to finish second, at least, which I did and we’ll keep our heads down and look to get back to race winning form at Brands Hatch.”

Images courtesy of www.psp-images.co.uk