The Be Wiser Ducati team joined their MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship rivals at Cartagena today (Friday) as Shane 'Shakey' Byrne and Glenn Irwin began their three days on track. The pair overall had a positive start to the test, despite a small crash for the four-time champion in the final session.

The team had been ready to work through their next stage of development with the Panigale and Byrne was able to equal the pace set by the Tyco BMW pairing of Christian Iddon and Michael Laverty. Byrne overall commented that the opening day had been a good start to this test, despite a moment at turn one, when he ran into the gravel and was forced to lay the Be Wiser Ducati down.

Rookie Irwin continued to adapt to the Superbike; lapping with some of his more experienced rivals in order to continuing learning the characteristics of the Be Wiser Ducati.

Byrne said: 

"Today has been a pretty good day to be honest and considering we are a day behind everybody, it has not been a bad start at all. I made a tiny little mistake which I got punished rather severely for, going up in to turn one after bottoming the front fork a little bit, it kicked the rear out. I thought, 'I will still make this, I will still make this' and went straight heading towards the gravel and thought, 'I don't know about this we have still got a bit of speed up here!' As the tyre wall got closer and closer I thought just dropping it on its side rather than riding it in to the tyres was the better option. That all stemmed from one tiny mistake so I feel a little hard done by, by that!

"We have had some new parts on the bike to start today and so getting them working in sync has been the order of the day. The bike that we had in Portimao was really good and we have made some improvements, but those improvements need some refining. We were almost on the back foot today which was a little bit surprising to be honest. But the great thing about this project is that it is brand spanking new; the bike is brand spanking new and everything is brand spanking new so where we start from, we have a great base to build from. So whilst it was a little bit slow this morning, the time that we got down to this afternoon was, I think, more than reasonable given the amount of laps we had and what we have been up against today.

"So all in all I think it has been a pretty good day, just the edge was knocked off of it by a tiny little mistake but I rode the bike back no real problem with that - it will polish out and away we go again tomorrow!"

Irwin said: 


"The first session I did seven laps just riding about on my own, I had new leathers that I was trying to break them in, they were made to measure but the legs are a bit tight! In the second session we came in to make a change and noticed a small issue with the rear of the bike so we only did about four laps, but I followed Kiyo which was pretty cool! It was good to learn off him so then I went out in the last session on my own on the harder tyre and went half a second quicker than I did behind Kiyo on the softer tyre so it is a positive start.

"We are going quicker every session, we made a change to the bike there that we started the session with and then we altered that change a bit further and made the bike better. I still feel like a novice but I feel like I can get there, I feel like it has been a good day which is positive."