HM Plant Honda's Shane Byrne has vowed that his British Superbike Championship challenge is not over for the year despite a pair of fifth places yesterday which saw him drop to fourth-equal in the title standings.

Byrne was leapfrogged was race-two winner Josh Brookes and is now on the same number of points as Swan Yamaha's Michael Laverty. The Kent man is now some 44 points behind leader John Hopkins with 75 left for the taking at the Brands Hatch finale.

“We didn’t come here for two fifth places, but after the problems of practice and qualifying if anyone had offered me that on Friday or Saturday I would have snapped their arm off. We were learning in race once having made radical changes to the bike and that was the fastest that we had run all weekend and it was getting better. In the second race I was concentrating on getting everything perfect to lead, but Josh was strong when he came through. We are on the back foot, but the championship is from over," said Byrne.