Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne was ‘shocked' to find that his time of 1’26.131 was enough to place him on pole for the first MCE British Superbike championship at Brands Hatch this afternoon.
The triple champ had problems in Q1 and Q2 and couldn’t find the pace to charge into the top five. But his team worked hard to make changes and for the final qualifier he was able to stop struggling and edged ahead of GBmoto’s Chris Walker to bag another pole this season.
“I have been really struggling and I wasn’t expecting pole at all. I did one qualifying session and I felt the bike wasn’t quite right, and I spent that session in the pits and trying to come up with the solution in Q2, and it worked a bit,” said Byrne this evening.
“But I felt it wasn’t good enough and we made another change. For the last session they made a bigger change and it worked. Everybody wants to go really well, and my confidence took a bit of a battering when I kept loosing the front end, and it’s really hard to push. I saw 26.1 on the lap boards and I thought I wasn’t going faster than that - then I got pole."
