Kyle Ryde tops Donington Park BSB Test ahead of Glenn Irwin

BSB 2024
Donington Park Test

Images by Dave Yeomans

The 2024 Bennetts British Superbike Championship kicked off with the opening R&G Official Test at Donington Park, and Kyle Ryde set the benchmark to hold off Glenn Irwin to top the times on the OMG GRILLA Yamaha Racing R1 ahead of the Circuito de Navarra season opener (April 20-21).

Series Director Stuart Higgs

“After what seemed to be a very long winter, it’s great to get the season underway with the official test at Donington Park. We were quite lucky with the weather, so we saw some meaningful lap times put in. It’s great to see the first evidence of the new technical regulations and new confined choice on tyre material, new liveries, new team and rider combinations, so it’s always a very exciting and motivating weekend. The lap time performances have shown that there’s a great deal of depth of competition amongst everybody. One small caveat, we did see some rogue lap times, as it was an official test, the full track limits monitoring capability wasn’t in place, so we will get to see more representative times when we reconvene in just nine days at Circuito de Navarra.”

Ryde had been the target ahead of the final session, upping the pace throughout the day as the local contender picked up where he left off at the end of 2023, pushing for the leading positions. In the last session of the weekend the threat of rain increased, but Ryde was ready for a final attack and on his first flying lap he became the only rider to dip into the 1m27s to maintain his edge.

Glenn Irwin had been closing the gap in the afternoon, but the Hager PBM Ducati rider didn’t get the chance to push for a flying lap before the rain started, and he ended the opening weekend of testing in second place, 0.523s adrift of Ryde.

Irwin split the two OMG GRILLA Yamaha Racing team-mates, who had been locked at the top for the majority of the weekend as Ryan Vickers held third overall at the chequered flag.

Andrew Irwin was leading the Honda Racing UK charge in fourth place and just 0.063s ahead of his team-mate and reigning champion Tommy Bridewell.

Andrew Irwin

“Honestly, it’s been a good test and we have worked through a lot of things. On every exit and in every session we have made a step forward and improved. We need to keep working and keep this momentum going, the ultimate goal is to keep improving and to keep moving forward. I feel like I am riding quite well again and I need to keep working hard over the next two weeks ahead of Navarra. We have two and a half days ahead of us there, so we need to focus on setting up the bike for the two longer races there as we don’t have a sprint race. I think Honda and the whole team in Louth have done a fantastic job, we have come here with a new bike and we have been competitive straight away. My team, Spider, Rhodri, Ben and Adam have all worked really well and I am really happy with how things are going, I try not to get too excited about testing, keep my head down and my focus is all on the racing that we have coming up.”

Tommy Bridewell

“I feel really strong and I have really enjoyed riding the bike. I think for me there was quite a big transition to manage, I’ve spent five years with a different manufacturer and I’ve got a big number one on the bike which makes me a target. Truthfully, I was sitting there at the start a little nervous but I feel like I’ve taken it all in my stride, I’ve got my head down, didn’t get flustered or panicked by lap times and we just chipped away with the bike and worked through our program. We’ve tried so many different things and learnt so much about the way the bike works which has been super valuable. I feel heading to Navarra we will focus a little more on electronics and work on them, chassis though I feel really good about. We are always striving to improve, even when we are fastest so that’s the target, but I feel we are in a good position.”

Peter Hickman completed the top six for the FHO Racing BMW Motorrad Team as four manufacturers featured inside the top six positions.

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Peter Hickman

“Obviously it’s great to be back on the FHO Racing BMW, apart from the weather it’s actually been okay; the wind has been quite strong, but temperature wise it’s not been too bad and the rain managed to stay away until the last session, and for myself we’ve had a positive test. We’re using the harder tyre, which is not my preferred choice or what I’d chose to use, but so far we’ve been pretty good. We’ve made a lot of small changes to the bike over winter, which has made a difference on circuit, even with a harder tyre I have gone 0.7s faster than what I raced at last year, so I think that bodes well for the rest of the year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do.”

Danny Kent had a strong start to his move to Yamaha for the new season with a seventh place on the McAMS Racing Yamaha, equalling the same best time as Hickman, whilst the pair were only 0.001s ahead of Jason O’Halloran on the Completely Motorbikes Kawasaki.

Dean Harrison ensured all three Honda Racing UK riders featured inside the top ten, with Leon Haslam completing the leading ten riders.

Dean Harrison

“I genuinely feel really happy, that’s one of the fastest lap times I’ve done around here, even in all that wind, on a new bike, so I’m happy. The bike feels really nice, there’s always room for improvement but I am super happy, the biggest change for me has been the difference in power delivery and the way the bike works on the side of the tyre, which is just a bit different to what I’m used to. I think we have been lucky with the weather, I don’t think the wind has helped, but I do think we’ve been lucky to get this much dry time. We’ve tried loads of different things on the bike, some things worked and some things didn’t but with my crew chief Lee we have worked well together. I feel good in myself and I feel good heading to Navarra, I know where I need to focus and where we can make some improvements.”

Christian Iddon and Josh Brookes were just outside the top ten.

Josh Brookes

“The weekend started out well considering how much time we’ve had off the bikes and it was as good as we could expect. The first thing was the changes to the engine and that didn’t show up any real problems or issues; the BMW is still strong and the times were competitive. The rest of the two days we spent making changes and trying to improve the package we had, but we didn’t really find anything and have ended up going back to how it was last year, and by that I mean the suspension and the chassis position is more or less how I would have rode last season. The good news is that what we had last year is the best of what we’ve had, but the idea of testing is to improve the set-up and find something new, and as I stand here now, we haven’t been able to find anything new or better. But the BMW is as good as it was last year and we haven’t lost anything with the engine changes, so there are some positives to take away.”

BSB now looks ahead to the season opener at Circuito de Navarra in Northern Spain.

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