The Penrith-based Be Wiser Ducati Racing Team endured a challenging day at Oulton Park for round two of the 2016 MCE British Superbike Championship today with both Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne and Glenn Irwin encountering problems during this afternoon’s Datatag Extreme Qualifying session.

Aboard the factory-backed Be Wiser Ducati Panigale R, 39-year-old Londoner Byrne set the pace in the first qualifying session, held in wet conditions at the Cheshire venue, and clearly had a good set-up to suit the inclement weather.

However, a slide on the opening lap of the second Q2 session, led to him running on into the gravel trap at Lodge Corner and two thirds of the way round the next lap, he highsided out of the action at Hizzy’s Chicane. With the handlebar broken, he was unable to rejoin the action meaning he’ll have to do it the hard way in tomorrow’s opening 18-lap race as he’ll be starting from 18th and the sixth row of the grid.

Team-mate Irwin didn’t fare any better either and an unfortunate technical problem on the very first lap meant his qualifying session was over before it had begun. A clutch issue forced him to park the bike trackside and with no time for the team to make the necessary repairs to get him back out on track, the 26-year-old Ulsterman from Carrickfergus will subsequently have to start tomorrow’s first race from the very back of the grid.

Shane Byrne: 

“It was a difficult qualifying session to sum up! The bike was working fantastically well in the wet and I was feeling really confident but at the start of Q2, I was putting in a fast out lap when I locked the front going into Lodge and I nearly went down. I ran onto the gravel and thought luck was on our side so rejoined and tried to be easy on the front a bit. In the middle of Hizzy’s though, the bike came round on me and whilst you think you can save them, sometimes you know that’s not going to happen. I’m disappointed for the whole Be Wiser Ducati team after the problem with Glenn’s bike but we have a lot of positives to take particularly being fastest in Q1 and having a great feeling with the bike. We’ll see what tomorrow brings and hopefully our bad luck is behind us.”

Glenn Irwin: 

“Having the technical problem so early in the session was really frustrating, naturally, as I’d been fast in the dry and fast in the wet so was confident of two top ten finishes on race day. Everything was working well but starting from the back row of the grid for race one will make that hard now so it will be damage limitation and I’ll be looking to set some good lap times to haul myself up the grid for race two. I came from 25th to 14th at Silverstone so I’ll need to be aggressive again tomorrow.”

Phil Borley, Technical Director: 

“Everything had been going well up until qualifying but then everything that could have gone wrong did so. We had the engine issue with Glenn’s bike which was obviously a real shame as he’d been going well, particularly in the wet, but on the flip side Shakey was quickest in Q1. We had a slight problem with his bike which delayed him going out, only by a couple of minutes, but perhaps it was enough to lose the heat in the tyres. He had a moment on his out lap and then lost the rear end on his flying lap so we’ve got our work cut out in race one tomorrow. On the plus side, when things have been going well, they’ve been going really well and although we’re still fine tuning the settings, we’re more than hopeful of scoring some good points.”

Datatag Extreme Qualifying Results

1 Leon Haslam (Kawasaki)
2 James Ellison (Kawasaki)
3 Jason O’Halloran (Honda)
4 Dan Linfoot (Honda)
5 Christian Iddon (BMW)
6 Michael Laverty (BMW)
18 Shane Byrne (Be Wiser Ducati)
29 Glenn Irwin (Be Wiser Ducati)

Images courtesy of Jon Jessop: 67 Shane ‘Shakey Byrne, 2 Glenn Irwin