Silverstone BSB: Irwin does the double in race two

Glenn Irwin again came out on top in the second Bennetts British Superbike Championship of the weekend at Silverstone on Sunday when the Honda Racing rider got the better of the Rich Energy OMG Racing Yamaha of Kyle Ryde once more with Rory Skinner (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) taking third.

It could have been all so different though as Ryde’s teammate, Bradley Ray crashed out with just seven laps to go after leading from the start. He took the holeshot off the line into Copse and he led Ryde, Skinner and Irwin at the end of lap one but Luke Mossey, Storm Stacey and Dan Jones were all out after going down at Becketts. Ray and Ryde continued to lead the way third time around with Skinner maintaining third ahead of Irwin but there was more drama a lap later as Tom Sykes highsided at Luffield taking Chrissy Rouse down with him and that brought out the safety car for a period of three laps. Andrew Irwin (Synetiq BMW) immediately made a move on the eighth lap and jumped up to third after overhauling no less than three riders in quick succession, including brother Glenn, but then ran wide at Brooklands and dropped back to fourth behind Skinner. With a new lap record, 53.102s, Ray opened up a lead of half a second by lap ten, one-thirds race distance, with Ryde a similar distance ahead of Skinner. Glenn Irwin was now up to fourth at the expense of brother Andrew with Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) still in sixth. Meanwhile, another crash, this time at Copse, saw Dean Harrison and Bjorn Estment out of the action. The front three were separated by three quarters of a second by lap 13, with Glenn Irwin now on his own in fourth and a similar gap back whilst O’Halloran was now up to fifth having overhauled Andrew Irwin. Lee Jackson and