Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne is ‘disappointed’ with race direction after the opening MCE British Superbike race at Silverstone.
The reigning champ has already secured his spot in the showdown but he was not happy that BSB race direction would not delay the first race due to the mixed track conditions.
At first the riders lined up on the grid, but some parts of the circuit were dry and other parts were soaking wet, and many racers were unsure of what tyres to use. But the race went ahead as planned, with Byrne opting for the intermediate wets tyres.
Speaking on Eurosport, Byrne added that he was happy for his team-mate, Glenn Irwin who bagged his first win in the class this afternoon, but Byrne did not finish the race as he crashed on the last lap at Farm.
“I am really disappointed with race direction. You have got five of your top riders in your championship coming to you saying this race is dangerous, you can’t run that race as wet as it was at the end of the back straight and the rest of the track being so dry. You are going to destroy wet tyres and you are going to be risking us all falling down if we run intermediates or slicks,” said Byrne.
“Stuart clearly said no so obviously you guys at Eurosport are far more important than the riders in this championship. That is disappointing for me. The race itself and the crash cost thousands of pounds and I smashed the thing to bits so I am really sorry to Paul and the team.
“It might be looked at upon that Shakey is sour he fell off, I am delighted for my team-mate, great job by Glenn and the other guys on the podium. I think sometimes if this was MotoGP and Valentino and Maverick and Jorge went up and said to race direction you need to give this ten or fifteen minutes just for that wetness to dry up then something would have been done about it. The way in which the thing was handled for me was really disappointing.”
Update: Race Director Stuart Higgs, speaking on Eurosport stated: “The lap time degraded by two seconds over a 30 minute period shows that if we waited 30 minutes it would have been pretty much the same. We made the right call, it was not a crash-fest as predicted and we did not have people making reckless tyre choices, to go when we did was the right decision and if we were in the situation again that would have been the same call.”
