Honda Racing’s Jason O’Halloran lines up on the second row of the grid for tomorrow’s opening Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Oulton Park, after setting the fifth fastest time aboard the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade.

With glorious conditions and blistering pace throughout qualifying, ‘The O’Show’ set the initial benchmark in the opening stage.

With consistent lap times, the Aussie made it through each qualifying session and is looking confident with the Fireblade package at the Cheshire circuit. Setting the fifth fastest lap time (1:34.404), O’Halloran was just 0.425 seconds from pole.

Meanwhile teammate for this round, Ryuichi Kiyonari has been building and improving his lap times across each session this weekend. Having just made the cut into Q2 on his final lap in qualifying, Kiyo tipped off at Hizzys after losing the front of the CBR. The Japanese ace was left unhurt and will start tomorrow’s 18-lap race from 18th position.

Tomorrow’s racing action is scheduled for race one to get underway at 1330 and race two a 1630.

#22 -  Jason O'Halloran

So far everything has been going really well this weekend and I’m feeling really confident in the package we have. We made it through each of the qualifying sessions and topped Q1, which was great. We didn’t really make too many changes to the CBR throughout the sessions and I worked more on my riding throughout. I changed how I was doing things in FP3 into two of the corners with entry and it made the feeling a lot better, so I think we need to adjust for my weight position on the bike now. I’m very confident and happy with what we have for tomorrow’s races, we have some very small tweaks to make ahead of warm-up in the morning, but all in all we’re in a good place to go racing. We’ve managed a lot of laps and everything is working really well; we have a good pace and we should be strong tomorrow.


#23 -  Ryuichi Kiyonari

I am so happy to be back in BSB this weekend and I am enjoying every moment. In Q1 qualifying we had a difficult start and we tried some different set-ups throughout. Towards the end we made progress and my lap times were much improved, I didn’t realise that I had made Q2 so stayed on track for some practice starts – it was a shock when I got back to the garage! In Q2 I felt much better, but we had a fresh tyre and too much excitement from me and I lost the front and crashed. I am very sorry to the team for this! Thankfully there isn’t too much damage, so I don’t think they will be too late to finish tonight. I am very positive for tomorrow, every session we get better and better; I am happy to join BSB again and be with the Honda team. I am happy to see all the fans again and many still remember me and call me Kiyo – I am very happy!

Havier Beltran -  Team Manager

We’ve had a great start to round three really here at Oulton Park. Jason’s first session in qualifying was strong, he topped the times and everything is working so well from the machine, the set-up and the team – I couldn’t ask for more from that side really. Throughout all the sessions he had good times and just kept building. Jason knows from row two it’s achievable and it’s all about getting a good start. He’s been consistent all weekend and has got a lot of time on race rubber and race distance, and I’m confident come tomorrow’s races. I think with a good start we can be on the podium. I’m really pleased with Kiyo and his progress over the two days, he’s been drafted in to help and develop a few things with Dan side lined for a few weeks. He’s done everything we have asked of him and I appreciate our Fireblade spec is very different to his back in Japan. A huge thanks to (Midori) Moriwaki for allowing Kiyo to be able to come over and help – it’s great to have him back with us.