Byrne happy with Panigale progress on opening day at Brands

Shane Byrne has said he’s happy with the progress made by his BeWiser PBM Ducati squad after topping the timesheets on the opening day at Brands Hatch.

Disappointed to walk away with two top eight results in iffy conditions last time out at Oulton Park, Byrne and his team made the most of today’s two dry sessions to show strong pace on both used and new tyres.

The four-time British Champion placed eleventh in the morning’s session despite trailing fastest man James Ellison by just 0.445 seconds, but improvements for FP2 saw him shoot up the rankings in the final moments to go top by 0.2.

“We arrived here at Brands Hatch, and like I have said before, we need more dry time on the Be Wiser Ducati to work on the setting,” he said. “We started the session this morning with the bike exactly how we had left the dry setting at Oulton Park, not because that was the ideal scenario, but because that is all we know at the moment.

“The great thing about this bike and team is that we start each round with a clean sheet of paper and just start chipping away and that does mean we don’t necessarily top the sessions or generate headlines. That said, this afternoon we worked in the same way and I think it was our 28th lap in the first session was our fastest and our 27th on a set of used tyres I was still improving my time in the second session.

“We put a new tyre in at the end like everyone else did and we were able to go quicker so I am pretty happy with the progress we made today, we just need to keep working hard and make sure we follow the right path to keep improving.”