Fourth place for Glenn Irwin in Oulton Park opener
Oulton Park
The Honda Racing UK team were in action today at Round 9 of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Oulton Park, where Glenn Irwin finished fourth in the opening eBay Sprint Race aboard the CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP.
Throughout the 14-lap race Glenn made his way through the pack from his starting position of ninth, to cross the line originally fifth. However, after an incident involving Jason O'Halloran and Peter Hickman, Peter was excluded from his part in Jason's crash which promoted Glenn to fourth. Ahead of tomorrow's races Glenn remains fourth in the overall Showdown standings, but after a DNF for Tarran Mackenzie, Glenn is now just within two points of the 2021 BSB champion in third.
Meanwhile Glenn's teammates have also enjoyed making progress at the Cheshire circuit, with Ryo Mizuno, Takumi Takahashi and Tom Neave all scoring their personal best lap times. During the morning qualifying it was Tom and Takumi battling for a spot in Q2 with Tom in the top-six for most of the session, however a late dash from Takumi saw him take the final spot in sixth, demoting Tom to eighth place.
In the opening race of the weekend it was Tom who made up the most places from his grid position in 20th, where he crossed the line in 13th, adding more points to his tally. Takumi finished Race 1 16th, with Ryo 18th.
Tomorrow the Honda Racing UK team will be back in action with two longer 18-lap races.
Today's race was enjoyable and everything was good apart from the start position and the first lap! I made a good pass on Lee [Jackson], followed by Rory [Skinner], Andrew [Irwin] and Danny [Buchan], to pull big moves against those lads who are all good is very confidence inspiring. The main thing is seeing the likes of Tommy [Bridewell], Pete [Hickman] and Jason [O'Halloran] all coming closer to me in the last few laps, and that's something I've not been able to say since I joined Honda at this circuit, as we do have our work cut out here. We showed at Snetterton that we're making progress, and again today we made a real positive step forward. Tomorrow's grid position for Race 2, we are only a place better than today, so it's head down, get a better start, enjoy the race and get stuck in.
I struggled with rear grip and couldn't maintain my pace in the second half of the race. I've set a new personal best and I don't think I'm in bad shape, so I'll do my best in the two races tomorrow.
Oulton Park isn't my favourite track, but I was in a good rhythm in FP1 and FP2, but I crashed in FP3. Due to the crash in FP3, I didn't get a good feeling in Q1 and Q2, and I tried in Race 1 but couldn't make a big improvement. I have clear points to improve for tomorrow, so I will do my best to enjoy the race tomorrow.
We scored more points today, which is a good thing, I also did my fastest lap round here which is more progress. It would have been nice to break into the 34s, but we can maybe set that as a goal for tomorrow's races. I keep measuring myself off Glenn, the fastest Honda, and his lap times, what he's doing, and I'm now seventh-tenths off him, so as long as I can keep shortening that window it's looking better. My aim is to take that next step in the championship and I want to keep in front of Danny [Kent], I had a good race with him today, but a little mistake cost me the position in front of him. Tomorrow it will be elbows out, we have a better starting position and I'm feeling good compared to Round 2 here, where after the sprint race I felt knackered and that I had nothing left, but today I felt good in myself and enjoyed it out there.
