Oulton BSB: Tough weekend for Irwin, Buchan

After a podium finish at the opening Bennetts British Superbike Championship round at Silverstone, and strong results in the other races, the Synetiq BMW team were brought back down to earth at Oulton Park with illness and bad luck hitting Danny Buchan and Andrew Irwin respectively.

Third, fifth and sixth at the season opener was a great start for Northern Ireland’s Irwin but he came away from Oulton with just a 12th place finish to his name, dropping from fourth to ninth in the championship standings. Taken out by another rider in race two, Irwin then suffered a monster high-side coming out of Old Hall Corner in the final race of the weekend and was lucky to walk away relatively unscathed. “It was a difficult weekend for sure and a bit of a low point after scoring a podium at Silverstone,” he said. “Certain tracks seem to suit certain packages now in BSB, so here’s hoping that Danny and I can be in that front group challenging for podiums at Donington.” Buchan had his weekend thwarted by illness with a virus leaving him short of strength and unable to muscle the BMW around Oulton as he would have liked. Tenth was his best finish, but he did score points in all of his races and sits two places and four points behind his team-mate in the championship table. “I was feeling poorly over the weekend so although not an excuse, it made the all-action Oulton Park even more challenging for me,” he admitted. “As I say no excuses, but we found some additional direction with the M1000RR package and Donington Park now can’t come soon enough.” Team manger Steve Plater echoed the views of his two riders but remained philosophical with the season having a long way still to run. “It’s been a tough weekend and from the podium at round one