PBM Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne has safely qualified for the Showdown, but he failed to add to his podium credits tally after finishing both MCE British Superbike races at Cadwell Park in sixth and fourth respectively.
The four-time champ had a difficult start to the race weekend and struggled to find the pace during the free practice sessions and ultimately in qualifying. Byrne only managed to make it through to Q2 and had to start race-one from eleventh on the grid.
In the opening race Byrne fought through the pack to bag sixth and narrowly missed out on a podium in the final outing at the Lincolnshire track after losing out to Tyco BMW’s Tommy Bridewell for third, and the reigning champion is finding it hard to stay positive.
“It’s really difficult to be positive if I look just at my results but at the same time if I look back to where I was on Friday when I just wanted to go home because I wasn’t feeling it at all, then I have to think that we have made some decent steps forward,” said Byrne.
“The team worked so hard for me this weekend to try and find the solutions but we still aren’t where we should be. If I’m trying to quantify how happy I am on results then obviously I’m not very happy at all, but I feel generally that the progress we’ve made over the course of the weekend has been good and I’m pretty pleased with that.
“Obviously I don’t go racing for fourth and sixth places and neither does the PBM team, and right now we need a bike that can win again. I’ve been training hard since the last round and I know I’ve worked my nuts off so we need to all go back and look at what we can do to come back at Oulton Park at our best.”
