Shane Byne at Brands Hatch last year. Picture by Nick Dungan

British Superbike Championships heads to Brands Hatch next weekend

Shane Byrne is looking forward to returning to home soil next week as the British Superbike Championship heads to Brands Hatch.

With the championships at the half-way stage the pressure is mounting on riders to get themselves into a position where they can challenge in the top six in the showdown series.

Byrne is on course to achieve that after picking up two seconds and a third at Oulton Park last week. He has also shown great form at Brands in the last few years.

In the 2011 season he finished with six podiums from eight races, while in the other two he finished 16th and 6th. He is currently second in the podium credits table with 17 points, seven behind Tommy Hill, while in the overall standings he is third with 209 points, 29 behind Hill, and one behind Josh Brookes who is second.

He said: “Brands is like home, I cycle up there regularly just to say hello to all the guys and girls.

“I really love the long circuits, it’s probably one of my favourite circuits in the world, I really look forward to riding there. It’s the first track I ever raced on and won on. It’s like an amphitheatre, everybody can watch.”

He is hoping to learn from mistakes made last season when he admits it took too long to get to grips with the new parts on his machine in the crucial showdown rides.

“It’s getting to a fairly crucial part of the season where you can make it through to the showdown which is the be all and end all,” he said. “It’s important to rack up the podium credits,and get ourselves in a position where when we get to the showdown races we have a chance to fight for every race.

“Last year going into the showdowns we starting adding new parts to the bike and it took a while to figure it out.”

Despite last week’s podiums he knows he has more work to do.

“Last weekend we had two seconds and a third, some people would say that’s fantastic, but for me it’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow,” he said. “It means I have got more work to do.”