Honda Racing completes a strong weekend at Snetterton

Tommy Bridewell

“Super weekend. The team has made humongous inroads with the bike. Our rear grip was really phenomenal, probably the best I’ve ever had on the Honda, but Snetterton’s got two long straights. The start/finish is uphill and we had a headwind today, while the back straight is massively long and we’re missing straight line speed. I think that in the speed traps we were 8-9 mph down on our competition. I can only do what I’m doing when I’m losing that much in those areas. It’s hard to make it back up elsewhere, so I’m really proud of how I rode, and how the team worked, because we knew where we were going to suffer. On our own we were fine, but in a battle it was obvious where we were lacking and we had to make it up everywhere else. I was able to make back my time in the corner and driving off the corner, so I’m really happy with how that’s gone. We’ve got a test coming up and I’m sure we will see some improvements coming from that, I’m just impatient and I want it last weekend!”

Andrew Irwin

“I’ve got very little to say at this stage. The team delivered a huge repair job last night and they worked incredibly hard late into the night to get my bike back in shape after the first crash. I had a gameplan to try and make back as much ground as I could, and for that to have come to an early finish is incredibly frustrating. I would like to thank everyone on the team - my crew of course, but all the Honda Racing team who all came together to give me a really fast bike again today.”

Jack Kennedy

“I got taken out on the first lap, the first corner, because of somebody else’s erratic riding. And they’ve been known for it all weekend, so it’s really, really frustrating to get taken out by somebody else’s actions. They made the lunge and overshot the corner, then braked aggressively and then swerved across the track to avoid the bikes in front of them. In doing so, they took my front wheel out and made me crash, and then I got run over as well. I’m very lucky not to have a broken ankle, it’s quite sore after getting run over, as you can imagine, but it seems to be in one piece, thank God. I felt really up for that race. I felt like the win could have been on again for us today so it’s really a great shame to walk away with no points. Hopefully the lads can get the bike fixed for the upcoming test this week. The only thing to take away is that it wasn’t a mistake on my part; I got taken out by somebody out of my control. There was nothing more that we could do.”

Dean Harrison

“It’s been a really competitive weekend and today we’ve come away with my best race finish of the Supersport season so far, so you have to say it was good. I struggled all weekend jumping back into the championship from the TT, which is quite a difficult adjustment, but me and Stu (Millen, crew chief), have chipped away all weekend and made the bike better and better and better. And I’ve adapted and gone better and better and better. So I can’t complain, really. We had the pace to run in the front-running group today, which was good because yesterday we didn’t. I’m happy, the team’s worked great, the bike feels good and now we’ve got a test coming up which I’m looking forward to very much before the next race.”

Team Manager Havier Beltran

“On balance it’s been a really positive weekend. Saturday delivered our first Superbike podium and our first Supersport win. Today we saw another Superbike podium, Tommy got even more points in the third race and in Supersport Dean got his best finish of the year. All of those are significant achievements. It is offset by the disappointment of Jack being eliminated from a race which he could have won, through no fault of his own, and for Andrew’s retirements on Saturday and Sunday. The team has worked exceptionally hard on all of the bikes and that is paying off, we have proven that we are going in the right direction and can look forward to our next event at Knockhill with confidence.”