British Superbike News

Tom Sykes

Shane Byrne on the Airwaves Ducati was the fastest man in this morning free practice session but in the afternoon session, the championship leader had a dramatic highside only ten minutes into the session.

The practice session was immediately red-flagged after he crashed at the esses and Byrne’s was put into the ambulance before going to the medical centre who confirmed that hehad suffered soft tissue damage to his left shoulder as well as losing his front teeth.

He was unable to ride for the rest of the day and a decision will be made tomorrow morning if he will be fit to qualify.

Tom Sykes was the fastest man in the afternoon session after the announcement this week that he will be replacing Noriyuki Haga in the World Superbike series for 2009.

He sat out the rest of the session as the rain began to fall while team-mate Atsushi Watanabe continued learning the track and picked up the pace.

There wasn’t much improvement when the session was restarted after the red flag but Sykes set a time that was good enough to get ahead of the two HM Plant Honda riders of Leon Haslam and Cal Crutchlow.

Karl Harris on the RM Racing Yamaha was fourth followed by Ducati riders, Leon Camier, Michael Rutter and Shane Byrne.

James Ellison at his home race for the Hydrex Bike Animal Honda team, finished in eighth place followed by Simon Andrews on the Lloyds British Jentin Yamaha and Gary Mason for the Quay Garage Honda team to complete the top ten riders of the session.

The new Formula One style qualifying which took place for the first time at the Cadwell Park round is in three seperate sessions.

Q1, is a twenty-five minute session with all the riders attempting to set a time to put them through to Q2.  Any rider outside the the top twenty will form at the back of the grid based on their qualifying times.

Q2, is only fifteen minutes long and is for the top twenty riders from Q1, with all riders again trying to set the fastest time and go through to Q3.  Any rider outside the top ten will line-up ahead of the riders already at the back of the grid from Q1.

Q3, the final session will select the times of the top ten riders to see who will qualify where at the front of the grid rows.

A little bit more exciting to watch perhaps but it still seems to reward the teams with bigger budgets and more spares to rely on.