Shakey, Kiyo, Jason and the whole HM Plant Honda team are working hard ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying at Croft to make further improvements following a challenging opening two free practice sessions at the third round of the British Superbike Championship.

Shane 'Shakey' Byrne and Ryuichi Kiyonari have been working through various setting changes as the team strive for further improvement, with the team-mates ending the day in ninth and fifteenth respectively.

In the first qualifying session for the National Superstock 1000 Championship Jason O’Halloran was able to make steps forward to finish the red-flagged session third fastest and feeling confident ahead of second qualifying tomorrow.

Shakey said:

“It’s Friday 13th and I have to say I am very happy to get through today incident-free! It hasn’t been a bad day for us and we have good speed with the HM Plant Honda Fireblade but we still need to make some refinements tomorrow before qualifying. We have some settings that we tested at Darley Moor that have worked well and also some problems we were expecting that have appeared. We have used old tyres in the afternoon session and my 19th of 23 laps was the fastest and we are not that far off so it is definitely not a disaster. I obviously don’t want to be ninth, but I am not worried.”

Kiyo said:

“At every round we have been pushing and testing to develop our Fireblade, but we still need to find a good setting here. The track is so different to Brands Hatch and Oulton Park and what we have tried just hasn’t worked here yet. We have been pushing hard and it is frustrating to be fifteenth fastest today, but we like a challenge so we need to keep trying tomorrow so we are ready for the race.”

Jason said:

“Today was good, this afternoon we got back on track and I am looking forward to moving up the order again tomorrow if it stays dry. I am feeling confident with the bike and I am sure as a team we can come up with something a little better tomorrow to get back to the head of the field.”

Team Manager Havier Beltran concluded:

“We have made steps forward today with Jason and he ended third fastest which was an improvement and we still know we have more for tomorrow. Likewise Kiyo and Shakey have been making good headway, but are still a long way off from where we want to be. We are hoping for a dry session tomorrow and we will work hard as a team to make changes to put us in the best possible position for qualifying.”