On a difficult weekend at Brands Hatch Shane Byrne walked away with the title ‘King of Brands’ after an entertaining day of racing on Sunday.

Although Shakey could only manage a second and a fifth place in two very different races at his home race, he stretched his lead in the championship overall.

It was an entertaining battle in race one in which he battled James Ellison, the vetran Chris Walker and old foe Ryuichi Kiyonari who after a slow start is finding his form.

As the race ebbed and flowed Byrne led the race with Kiyo looking to make his move, and he did with just a few laps to go.

Then Shakey waited and waited and got his opportunity to take his chance and he did but Kiyo wasn’t having any of it and he retook the lead.

However Shakey was still right on his back wheel and with just two laps to go he took the lead again out the back of the GP circuit, only for Kiyo to take it back and claim victory.

Reflecting on race one, Shakey said: “If podium finishes came on Frosties packets we would all have them! I think it was a difficult race; I got a good start and led for pretty much most of it and I could see that I wasn’t getting anyway from them.

“With that in mind I wanted to be consistent and not make many mistakes and then James came by me and then it was Kiyo. In fact Kiyo came by me so fast that I thought ‘have I been asleep or something?!’ He done a really good job and I managed to get by him then he came back and I think either one of the three of us could have won it.

“I had a couple of ideas for the last lap but they never quite came to fruition. All credit to the guys as we had a good race and now we will look at what we can do for race two.”

In race two Shakey started on pole position having posted the fastest lap in race one, and he lead into the first corner from James Ellison.

The race wasn’t to go on for two long however as Ellison had a massive accident that saw his bike hit Shakey as he was right behind it. How he managed to stay on the bike we are still not sure, but his hand took a bit of a battering.

Shortly after the race got going again and was red flagged as the weather came in and Howie Mainwaring had an off out the back of the GP circuit. When they did get racing for the third and final time, it was chucking it down.

The war for four with Kiyo looked like it would continue with them both out in front in the early stages but they would eventually slip back, with Shakey settling for fifth place after Kiyo retired and Josh Brookes couldn’t trouble the podium places either. The victory and well deserved it was too went to Josh Waters.

Speaking after race two, Shane said: “It’s been a hard weekend and although I managed to take the pole position I had to work really hard as we were constantly making changes with the bike to try and get it to work how I wanted it to.

“I really enjoyed the first race and fair play to Kiyo, he rode really well. I led for the first part of the race but once he came by I knew I had to try and pass him as he was really strong coming out of the last corner. I tried a couple of times on the last lap but there wasn’t a real opportunity to do anything so I settled for a safe second.

“The second race got off to the worst start when James crashed in front of me and the bike caught my brake lever and trapped my hand between the handlebar although, luckily, there was no major damage to my fingers.

“In the re-start, we had difficult conditions to contend with in the wet so the plan was to stay out of trouble as my main title rivals were all behind me. Another podium would have been great and whilst second and fifth could have been better, I was able to pick up the ‘King of Brands’ trophy also so the weekend ended on a good note.”

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