The Airwaves Ducati team today made a promising start to round 8 of the British Superbike Championship at Knockhill with Shane Byrne finishing the day fastest in Free Practice 1and joint fastest in Free Practice 2. Team mate Leon Camier finished 8th and 7th.
After topping the timesheets in the morning by just 000.1 second, Shane had the fastest lap of the day in second practice until Leon Haslam on the Honda posted an identical time of 49.004 with just 2 minutes of the session remaining. Leon Camier's quickest time of 49.328 also came in second practice during which he completed a total of 55 laps, more than any other rider.
Shane was pleased with his progress today saying: "Practice was pretty much business as usual. I have a set programme for the day which we worked through no problem. The first session allowed us to do some fairly long runs on a single tyre so we could see how consistent I can be. Then this afternoon I wanted to get some new brake pads bedded in as Knockhill is notoriously hard on the brakes. Once I was happy with them I used the remaining time to confirm my race set-up before concentrating on posting some quicker laps at the end. Our set-up for the rest of the weekend is looking good. I'm really happy with the Pirelli tyres and I'm enjoying riding the Airwaves Ducati 1098R."
Following his first day at Knockhill on a Ducati, Leon commented:"I used the session this morning to basically find my feet and gain a good level of understanding of how the Airwaves Ducati works around here. In this afternoon's practice I went for a long run of laps and still managed to improve upon my fastest time from this morning which I'm happy about. I now just need to get my head down and work on reducing my lap times further for qualifying tomorrow."
Qualifying for round 8 of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship commences tomorrow, Saturday August 9th 2008 at 1430.
