Silverstone BSB: Irwin celebrates dream treble

Glenn Irwin completed a dream weekend on Sunday afternoon as he took the third Bennetts British Superbike Championship race win at Silverstone, the Honda Racing rider taking a clean sweep for the first time in his career to take an early lead in the Championship table.

Bradley Ray (Rich Energy OMG Racing Yamaha) bounced back from his earlier crash to take second, with Andrew Irwin joining his brother on the podium with third on the Synetiq BMW. It was another tough race for Leon Haslam though as he finished 13th on the VisionTrack Kawasaki whilst the MCE Ducati pairing of Tom Sykes and Josh Brookes fared even worse in 16th and 18th. Ray grabbed the holeshot but Rory Skinner (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) took the lead at Becketts and although Irwin went up the inside at Brooklands, he immediately ran wide and that gave the lead back to the Kawasaki man. He led over the line with Andrew Irwin in third and then Kyle Ryde, Ray and Tommy Bridewell. Second time around, the top three remained the same but Ray was up to fourth ahead of Bridewell (Oxford Products Ducati) and Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) with Ryde slipping back to seventh. Ray briefly got up to third but the BMW of Andrew Irwin re-took the position on lap four. Brother Glenn had also taken over at the head of the field and he led Skinner by a tenth of a second at the end of the fifth lap although it was an Irwin one-two soon afterwards with Andrew pushing Skinner back to third at Becketts. O’Halloran was also on the move and he now sat in fourth. By lap ten, one thirds race distance, the running order was Glenn Irwin, Andrew Irwin, O’Halloran, Skinner, Bridewell – who admitted to making a ‘bold’ set up change prior to the race – and Ray. Ryde was back to eighth with