Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne pulverised the rest of the MCE British Superbike pack to lead the final free practice session at Oulton Park this afternoon.

The former triple champ did a 1’34.939 which cemented his place at the top of the timing screens. His time was half a second faster than the lap record clocked by Ryuichi Kiyonari back in 2006.

Byrne was able to hold off the charges from Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes and GBmoto Kawasaki’s James Ellison to bag a provisional pole position. Brookes was leading the session until Byrne went 0.6 seconds faster, and Ellison rounded off the top three with a 1’36.020.

After 40 minutes there was a red flag after GBmoto’s Chris Walker’s Kawasaki went up in flames at Hizzys as he crashed, putting an abrupt end his free practice session, leaving his team in a race against time to get his bike sorted for qualifying. But the team are confident that the bike will be ready in time. See below for video.

Initially it was Byrne who set the pace with a 1’36.849. Milwaukee Yamaha’s Tommy Bridewell appeared to have got over his technical problems from yesterday to go second fastest with a 136.937, only for Easton to go one tenth of a second faster to edge the Devizes rider. In the end the pair were unable to improve their race-pace and ended the session in eighth and sixth place respectively.

With five minutes to go Brookes clocked a 1’35.546 to go top, but that lasted all of four seconds as Byrne pulled a 1’34.939 out of the bag to smash the lap record set by Kiyo in 2006 and was the only rider to lap inside the 1’34’s throughout the 45 minute session.

Buildbase BMW’s Ryuichi Kiyonari experienced a problem with the back brake of his bike and came to a stop at Hill when he was eighth fastest overall, just before the red flag came out. He was able to go back out again to end the day fourth quickest with a 1’36.56, with Anvil Hire TAG Racing’s Richard Cooper rounding off the top five.

Tsingtao’s Jon Kirkham and Quattro Plant Kawasaki’s Dan Linfoot completed the top ten, with Tyco Suzuki's John Hopkins narrowly missing out on that tenth place – finishing eleventh on the timesheets.

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