Irwin: The lap times are coming

Glenn Irwin feels he’s in a prime position to fight for his first Bennetts British Superbike race win of the year after sealing pole position at Brands Hatch and declaring ‘the lap times are coming no matter what lap we’re on’.

The Be Wiser Ducati rider claimed his maiden BSB pole position through qualifying, having started from pole in race two at Snetterton last month, and feels despite a set-up experiment not paying off at the Kent track during FP3 he’s confident with his race pace to challenge for wins this weekend.

“I’m really, really happy with it [pole position] starting fast in FP1 and building speed throughout the weekend,” Irwin said. “The lap times are coming no matter what lap we’re on with an old tyre.

“The change we wanted to try in FP2 we tried in FP3 and in theory it should give us something without changing anything but it was not for me, I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it could be for another track.

“I really struggled earlier and I thought ‘was yesterday just one of those days I clicked and today isn’t?’. But we went back to what we knew, back to exactly how we rolled out yesterday morning and fine-tuned it.

“You’ve got to do a 24s to take pole here, the lower the better, and after Q2 there were two areas where I knew that we needed something.”

Irwin, who has secured two podiums so far this year for Be Wiser Ducati, sits just seven points off Buildbase Suzuki’s Bradley Ray in the BSB riders’ championship as the battle to secure a top six Showdown spot starts to heat up.