The HM Plant Honda team is concentrating on making further improvements ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session at Oulton Park, in preparation for Bank Holiday Monday’s second round of the British Superbike Championship.

Ryuichi Kiyonari and Shane 'Shakey' Byrne ended the opening day of free practice in eighth and ninth places respectively but with various bike set-up changes being made by both riders, the team is confident of further improvement ahead of tomorrow’s race one grid deciding qualifying session.

In the National Superstock 1000 Championship, Jason O’Halloran ended the first qualifying session in second place and like the Superbike riders, has a direction for setting changes ahead of the final qualifying session tomorrow.


Kiyo said:

“Today we need to find some more speed, because we want to be faster for qualifying. We looked at the data from last season and then we tried a lot of new changes but we still have lots to work through that we want to test before the race. We have a small problem that we need to fix with the setting but once we have I think we will be much faster than last year and I will also push harder as I want to be on pole position.”

Shakey said:

“This morning we just ran on old tyres as we were working through a lot of changes and if you use older tyres it will exaggerate any problems there might be, which means you can solve them a lot faster and it has been a useful exercise. We weren’t a million miles away but this afternoon we have not been able to move up a level yet. The HM Plant Honda team know what they are doing and Chris (Pike), my crew chief, has a plan for the morning so that we can get it sorted in the final free practice session. We know how good the Fireblade can be on track, we saw that last weekend at Brands Hatch, so we just need to find that extra bit tomorrow before qualifying and then we will be good to go.”

Jason said:

“The first session this morning was ok and we had just been making some changes to the settings because what we had at Brands Hatch doesn’t work so well here. This afternoon in the first qualifying session we went much faster, but we still had a few minor things that we know we need to change tomorrow but we have a pretty clear direction.”

Team Manager Havier Beltran concluded:

“It was a tough start to the weekend here at Oulton Park and Kiyo and Shakey still have a lot they want to try and test in free practice three tomorrow, ahead of qualifying. It was also unfortunate for Kiyo to have a technical problem towards the end of the session. We still have a lot to work through but we are moving forward all the time and our aim is for a good qualifying session tomorrow so we are in a good position for Monday’s race. Jason was struggling with chassis settings a little and still requires a bit more from the bike to feel a little bit more comfortable in tomorrow’s second qualifying session. Tomorrow is another day and we are all hoping for another strong qualifying performance here at Oulton Park.”