Glenn Irwin maintains championship lead after Oulton Park opener
Oulton ParkGlenn Irwin maintains his Bennetts British Superbike Championship lead by 18 points, after placing 11th in today's Oulton Park BSB opener
Glenn Irwin maintains his Bennetts British Superbike Championship lead by 18 points, after placing 11th in today's Oulton Park BSB opener. Race 1 this afternoon followed a mixed Qualifying session for the Honda squad, where tricky weather conditions hampered progress at the 2.69-mile circuit.
Heading straight out in Q2, after placing seventh on the combined practice times, Glenn qualified ninth on the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP ready for the afternoon's 14-lap race. Dropping back places in the opening few laps, Glenn was running 11th when the race was brought to an early end on the 12th lap following a red flag.
Meanwhile Tom Neave finished just shy of the points in 17th place, after a crash in Qualifying left him without a lap time and he started Race 1 from last position in 32nd, which was a huge blow to the BSB rookie after smashing his personal best lap times in each practice session and making huge steps across the weekend. Making up 15 places throughout the race from 32nd to finish 17th, Tom will start Race 2 tomorrow (Monday) from 15th on the grid, just one position behind his Honda teammate Glenn in 14th.
Ryo Mizuno also enjoyed working his way through the pack, where he finished 22nd after starting from 31st, and Takumi Takahashi finished 25th.
The Honda Racing UK team will be back in action again tomorrow (Monday 2 May) with Race 2 at 13.30 and Race 3 at 16.30, the team will also continue its Roads preparations, with John McGuinness racing in the Pirelli National Superstock Championship race at 12.30.
I was happy enough with Qualifying, we made the wrong tyre choice at the beginning of the session and made a quick decision on track to come in and make a change, so we got one lap and we had to make it count. We probably could have made more of it, but we couldn't afford to have an abandoned lap or an over-shoot, so ninth was OK as some of our rivals were further back. The race was a bit disappointing, we've been struggling all weekend with some areas and the race highlighted this, so we have some work to do this evening ready for tomorrow's two races.
We are struggling a lot this weekend. I had a good feeling at last week's test, but from FP1 yesterday to Qualifying today, I never got back to the feeling and it stagnated. In Race 1 we got back to base and were able to get back to the feeling we had in the test. We understand what the problem is and we will use tomorrow's two races to further improve our understanding for the next race at Oulton.
Qualifying we had wet conditions and I couldn't push hard enough to get a good lap time. In Race 1, I didn't get a good start and I also struggled to find a good rhythm after the start, which resulted in me dropping some positions. I don't have good speed at this track yet, so first I will try to get some good speed during tomorrow's warm, with the aim to get a better result in both races.
Today was far from ideal with the crash in Qualifying and not getting a lap time after the weather conditions changed, which meant I started the first race of the weekend from the back of the grid. I always knew it was going to be a difficult race to come through, but after a really positive FP3 session, I knew I had the pace to run towards the back of the point scoring positions, so that was the aim for the race. Unfortunately the race was red flagged with three laps to go, having chased down Tom [Sykes] in 15th place from six seconds back, but we ran out of laps and finished 17th. However, tomorrow is a new day and we have a much better grid position, two races and feel we can really get stuck in.