Glenn Irwin is determined to continue his mission of clawing back the advantage in the Bennetts British Superbike Championship standings at Cadwell Park this weekend as the BeerMonster Ducati rider aims to close the deficit to his teammate Tommy Bridewell.
Irwin holds a 26.5-point deficit to Bridewell ahead of the three races in Lincolnshire this weekend, with the advantage reduced last time out at Thruxton. The BeerMonster Ducati team had a challenging time at the previous round, rbut Irwin is now confident that they can bounce back this weekend and get their title challenge firmly back on track.
The BeerMonster Ducati rider knows though that Cadwell Park traditionally can pull a number of riders into the mix, and he is hoping that that can aid his quest to close the advantage ahead of the Showdown.
Irwin said: “I think from the outside in, it is easy to look at Thruxton and think what the hell went wrong, and for sure it has been more of a struggle there, but from my own championship challenge, it is a round where I pulled eight points back on the championship lead and to do that was really good. I looked at it after, if I had won three races there and Tommy had three seconds, like perhaps at a different track, then I still would have only pulled six points back on him so I will certainly take the eight point reduction!
“From my title challenge it was good, people say I am a positive person and how I look at things is perhaps always positive. After Thruxton Jason was back in the championship fight and I feel like that is a good thing; people might ask why, and the reason being that Jason riding on top form is what I want because for me to keep overhauling points, I want people between me and Tommy and I think that’s what potentially can happen now.
“That being said, we now go to Cadwell Park, I expect normal service to resume as such, by that I mean me and Tommy become competitive and join the rest of the party! I think what the Kawasaki riders did at Thruxton was really impressive and particularly the young guns with Charlie and Max, Brad Perie, they all beat us fair and square. I also expect them to go well at Cadwell Park.
“Last year the Honda was enjoyable and the Kawasaki has always worked well for Leebob, Storm can be in the mix. Especially with the Superpole format, qualifying is critical there and the track lends itself to be favourable to all manufacturers, so I am extremely aware of that and I think it is safe to say that we will be competitive this weekend. But, I expect a lot of these young guns to take confidence from what they have done, along with the normal pretenders as such.
“Qualifying is key at Cadwell Park because it is one of the difficult races to pass on and I have done a lot of work between rounds on wellness and mindfulness – being calm and being focused as always. The team have been great, there are a couple of things we want to test that we want to confirm, so let’s get stuck in. I am enjoying it and like the position that I am in at the minute so it is all good!”