Today’s race winner Glenn Irwin has admitted his delight as he’s now able to sign off at the Be Wiser Ducati camp with victory in dry conditions.
The Northern Irishman hasn’t won at all this season and after his first Bennetts British Superbike win last year amid Silverstone’s torrid rain, he says he was hunting for one on dry Tarmac.
Irwin led this afternoon’s first race from lights-to-flag and crossed the line nearly two seconds clear of championship runner-up Jake Dixon, but revealed that issues with his lap timer made his charge all the more difficult.
“When you’re leading and you have no target, you can use a reference on your dash that lets you know everywhere on the track if you’re going good or not good,” he said. “It wasn’t working from the first lap so it was quite difficult.
“The guys weren’t making moves and I thought if it stays like this until maybe six or seven to go, I’ll try to go. I saw my brother’s pit board said P2 and I thought, ‘I don’t want him behind me’.
“But when I saw he was there I thought, ‘he’s harder on the tyre than me because he’s new to this game’ and with six or seven to go we started to wind it on a little bit and I thought maybe he is holding the other guys up a little bit.
“It was really weird – an easy race is one you win and that’s the only easy race I’ve had since Silverstone in the wet last year after three seasons in BSB.
As the Carrickfergus rider moves to pastures new in the Bournemouth Kawasaki squad next season, he said he was elated to leave Paul Bird’s team on top form and is glad to have escaped the forecast tomorrow, which looks to be calling for heavy rain.
“I said to the boys ‘It looks like it’s wet tomorrow and I want to win in the dry, this race was like the finale and we have to win.’
“It’s the best way we could have hoped to leave the team and Jake told me the weather tomorrow is going to be horrendous. I’m Irish, so I could easily go and get a crate of Guinness.
“I needed that win before next year. I owe Birdy so much for the last three years. Sorry it took so long to win a dry race, but thanks boss.”
