Kent’s Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne was back on track this week with his Be Wiser Ducati team for the latest round of pre-season testing.

The four time British Superbike Champion was again in Spain, as he and teammate Glenn Irwin, made good progress despite some less than ideal weather.

Shakey and rookie team-mate Irwin were in action at Cartagena last week before venturing to Guadix this week, where the emphasis was very much on continuing the development aboard the fully factory-supported Be Wiser Ducati Panigale Rs rather than concentrating on setting fast lap times.

With the latest phase of the development programme successfully completed, the team’s attentions now turn to the official BSB tests at Silverstone and Donington Park later this month prior to the season starting at Silverstone on April 8/10th.

Speaking after another week of testing, Byrne said:  “We were a bit off the pace in Cartagena and some people were making out it was a disaster, but we had our plan of attack and that wasn’t to go out there and set blistering lap times.

“We found a few areas where we needed to improve the bike after the previous test and we worked on those. I’m glad we had a couple of minor issues as it allowed us to concentrate on sorting those which is more important than being on the top of the timesheets right now.

“Guadix proved to be very challenging as we lost so much track time due to the very cold weather, but yesterday when conditions were better, we got through loads of work and upped our pace. I did my fastest lap on well used tyres and we were in the ballpark times-wise.

“The plan throughout was not to stick our neck out for the sake of a quick lap, we let the others do that, but it was to make sure nothing went wrong. Overall, it was a really positive week’s testing and I’m now looking forward to riding at the UK tracks and continuing the work which we plan there in readiness for the season starting.”