A compressed pre-season saw a brace of Triumph Street Triple RS road bikes turned into Quattro British Supersport-ready weapons in just nine flat-out weeks by the team at Astro JJR Triumph.

A testing schedule that included little more than a couple of snowy laps at Donington plus a huge accident in Spain that took rider Shane Richardson out of action with serious hand injuries sww the team at Silverstone a man down and knowing it would be as much a testing weekend as a racing one - the focus was very much quality bike development for the season ahead over outright results.

So to come away with three comfortable top tens was a result that even a race-two DNF couldn’t dampen and the team head to Oulton this weekend in buoyant spirits although in no doubts regarding the scale of the challenge the highly technical track will pose for new bikes without the benefit of historical base data for the circuit.

“Silverstone was a brilliant weekend,” said Rhys Irwin who landed a 6th in race one before being taken out of 5th place late in race two. “We made a lot of progress right from the start, and made a massive step with the bike for race two, ironing out a chatter issue that had really been causing us headaches.

“It was unfortunate race two was cut short for me and the result didn’t fully reflect the progress we’d made. If I’m honest I came away gutted I wasn’t on the podium but we are in a great place - if we can keep progressing like this was we can have a very competitive motorbike.”

Josh Day who finished 10th and 7th respectively was similarly upbeat.  “I’m really happy with the first proper day in the new office last week at Silverstone and how it all went especially considering how early we are in this project with the Triumph Street Triple RS.”