PBM Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne is one happy rider this evening after bagging what he described as a ‘tricky’ pole position during the MCE British Superbike qualifying session, held in mixed conditions at Snetterton.
Byrne only put down a few laps, but it was more than enough to better his rivals and a 1’48.376 cemented his P1 position for race one. Q3 was declared wet but towards the end of the final qualifying session the track was dry enough to go out on slicks, and Byrne did just that.
His team put a new tyre in his ZX-10R, and he was spurned on by the Honda bikes of Jason O’Halloran and Dan Linfoot, but after all their efforts were unable to topple Byrne from the top of the time-sheets.
“It was tricky – in all honesty I was watching the session at the start and it as obvious that everyone was going to have a go at the end. I saw the two Honda guys go out with new tyres and Jason (O’Halloran) had his knee down going through Agostini so I knew it was not as wet as we had thought,” said Byrne,.
“I said to the team, put a new tyre in and I went out and put in two or three laps, enough to take P1 but then they were catching up but I stayed out and crossed the line with about five seconds to spare and nailed it up, it was as dry as it was going to be. I went a lot faster then and I am delighted to take pole.
“The races will be hard work – it has been a strange weekend and the bike has thrown in a few spanners in the works and was different to how it was at the test here. But the team has done a great job for me to be on pole.”
