Glenn Irwin returned to winning ways at his happy hunting ground of Silverstone in the opening round of the 2023 Bennetts British Superbike Championship, taking the PBM Team back to winning ways onboard the BeerMonster Ducati.
Irwin had finished fifth in the shorter BikeSocial Sprint Race, but with overnight changes he fought back stronger in Sunday’s two races to claim a third place before ending the weekend with the first victory of the season for Ducati.
Irwin said: “It didn’t go to plan at the beginning of Sunday! The race two start was terrible; again I did something not so good with the clutch. My plan was if you’re in the front two or three, take it easy through the last corner as it’s very hard on tyres and if one or two get by, you are still in the top four. That wasn’t the case, and I ended up back again and I tried to conserve my tyre and had to try and pass Leon Haslam.
“Danny Kent was doing a really good job; I could see where he was weak as I had spent three years on the Honda and that was probably an advantage. I just did a bit of a dive, then he came back through, once he did, I repassed him and it was then I decided to try to drop the hammer a bit more.
“It was just a really good set up by the boys in the team and they worked very hard on Saturday night. I didn’t sleep thinking how we could improve after race one and we were messaging each other until something like 2am! The bike was fantastic, we could still be strong in some areas, but I struggled a lot in the last corner and turn one - but I never gave up.
“I said in the morning I wanted to play an Oscar winning role in the final two races of the weekend and not a support role, and I knew after warm up that we could do that. Sunday’s first race I think was really good because we came 13th to third and it was tough, but I really enjoyed it and then to go on and go grab the Bafta at the end of the day was just fantastic!”
Johnny Mowatt, Team Co-ordinator added: “There’s a massive sense of relief to get round one under our belts and out the way! We were looking a bit thin on the ground three to four weeks ago, but both riders stayed positive and rode way above our expectations so to come away with a win and four podiums with the F23 Ducati V4R for our new sponsors BeerMonster is simply superb. It’s been a fantastic effort by every single member of the team and whilst we know there’ll be challenges ahead, this gives us a tremendous platform to build on.”