Glenn Irwin finished runner-up in last year’s battle for the Bennetts British Superbike Championship and as he returns to the PBM Team for 2023, he is hungry to go one better in his bid for a debut title, kicking off the season at the circuit where he completed the winning hat trick last year.
Irwin had his first taste of the new Ducati during the Spanish test at Circuito de Navarra before some laps in the wet at last week’s Silverstone test, but believes he is already feeling back at home on the Ducati as this weekend’s first round rapidly approaches.
Irwin said: “I am very excited to get going at the first round; I had an amazing feeling with the bike at Navarra and also a good feeling at Silverstone. It was nice to turn some laps in the wet and I think like most teams we didn’t do too much at Silverstone because of the conditions, but we did get a feeling and we achieved that despite the wet conditions. It was productive and then we had a nice four hour delay to our flight home so me and my crew chief Ryan got some extra time to go through a load of stuff, which I think some of it will translate to the dry, some of it won’t.
“In Navarra we had a great feeling and it was great to be back with the PBM squad; the familiarity and freshness of the staff and I think that we have one of the best packages on the grid. We know going into Silverstone that it is a track that has been notoriously tough for the Ducati in recent years, but it has won there too, so let’s hope the new bike along with me and Tommy can give PBM a much stronger start to the season than they had last year.
“I feel good in myself and that is the main thing both physically and mentally we are in a good place to mount a championship challenge. Silverstone is always exciting and can throw up some strange things, so it will be interesting to see what happens this weekend, especially in the dry.
"I am excited to see where we measure up, I am feeling positive to see where we are in the dry and what we now need to work on because we know the strengths of my bike, but we can only see it when we are in competition and we can only do that at a race weekend now. Let’s kick off the season with the BeerMonster Ducati team in the best possible way, respecting that we know that Yamaha and Honda have a good track record there, so let’s see what we can do.”