Buildbase BMW’s Ryuichi Kiyonari has spent the evening apologising to his MCE British Superbike rival, PBM Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne after he accidently touched bikes with the ZX-10R man which resulted in the pair crashing out at Hizzys in race two this afternoon at Oulton Park.
Both riders were fortunately not hurt, but Kiyo feels that he has let everyone down, especially his team and Byrne. But there were some positives in that final race for the Japanese rider. He managed to improve his race pace, and went out on track on an SCO tyre for the first time, and improved from race one where he finished in fifth, to race two where he was leading the front pack – until his ‘mistake’.
Now Kiyo is looking ahead to the next round at Snetterton and wants to make amends for his DNF, to get back on to the podiums once again.
“I feel very bad and not good because I am so sorry to Shakey, my team, sponsors, fans and Shakey’s team as I think it was a good race and I was enjoying racing with Shakey - and I destroyed everything with my mistake and I am sorry,” said Kiyonari, speaking to bikesportnews.com this evening.
“I am OK, I am in pain but no problem with me. I did a big mistake but you cannot do that mistake at the end of the race and I still can’t believe why I hit Shakey, but the positive is that we are both OK. I am not happy with everything but I am happy with the machine setup because for me race two was much faster than race one. If I crashed alone – then no problem, but I hit Shakey.”
