Following the announcement at the end of last season that four-times MCE BSB champion Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne will remain with the Paul Bird Motorsport team for the 2016 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship, whereby he will be joined by promising Ulsterman Glenn Irwin, the Penrith-based team today officially launched the Be Wiser Ducati Team in London.

As well as the riders, sponsors and various team members being introduced to selected media and VIPs at the Sanctum Soho Hotel this afternoon, the team displayed the Be Wiser-liveried and fully factory-supported Ducati Panigale R which Byrne and Irwin will have at their disposal.

Both Byrne and Irwin will race under the Be Wiser Ducati banner following the association towards the end of 2015 between the leading insurance brand and Paul Bird’s team. The deal confirms a multi-year association with the nine-times British and National champions who have also sampled victories at World Superbike and MotoGP level.

The association with Ducati also heralds a return to the marque on which Steve Hislop and Shane Byrne both claimed British Superbike Championships for the Italian manufacturer under the MonsterMob Ducati branding in the early 2000s.

A hectic pre-season testing schedule both in the UK and in Spain will continue later this month in preparation for the 2016 MCE Insurance British Championship season which gets underway at Silverstone on April 10th 2016.

In addition to today’s team announcement, the team’s brand new website has been launched at http://www.pbmuk.net whereby details of the team, riders, sponsors, machine and 2016 calendar can be found.

Paul Bird, Team Owner: 

“We are deadly serious about winning the 2016 MCE British Superbike Championship so where better than an upmarket central London hotel to officially launch the team and to state our intentions. We have no other distractions away from BSB this year so we can fully concentrate on the job in hand and we are in good shape to win back the title that we so narrowly missed out on retaining last season. Shane and Glenn have been in constant training and we have had some good testing on the bikes already, with loads of potential still to come. We won’t be doing a lot of talking this year; we will leave our results to do that for us on the track.”