HM Plant Honda's Shane Byrne entertained himself with a race full of near-crashes in the wet race one at Oulton Park yesterday but managed to close the gap on tital rival John Hopkins, who lobbed it out early on and had to watch from the sidelines.

Byrne was in a podium spot for most of the race but just got mugged on the last corner by veteran Michael Rutter. The Kent man is happy simply to have finished in what were treacherous conditions.

“I honestly can’t believe I led some of the laps in the race as it wasn’t easy. I battled for the podium and I have never had so many near crashes in one race in my career. We just need to improve our wet setting and it wasn’t helped with the changing conditions over the weekend," said Byrne.

"We took a gamble on our setting for the race and it was faster than we were yesterday. The team did a great job to get a better feeling for me with the rear tyre and fourth place meant good points for our championship, especially as John Hopkins crashed. I was disappointed to get knocked off the podium in the race on the last lap, but with the issues we were having it wasn’t a bad result.”