The Airwaves Ducati team today made a promising start to round 8 of the British Superbike Championship at Knockhill with Shane Byrne finishing the day fastest in Free Practice 1 and joint fastest in Free Practice 2. Team mate Leon Camier finished 8th and 7th. After topping the timesheets in the morning by just 000.1 second, Shane had the fastest lap of the day in second practice until Leon Haslam on the Honda posted an identical time of 49.004 with just 2 minutes of the session remaining. Leon Camier’s quickest time of 49.328 also came in second practice during which he completed a total of 55 laps, more than any other rider. Shane was pleased with his progress today saying, “Practice was pretty much business as usual. I have a set program for the day which we worked through no problem. The first session allowed us to do some fairly long runs on a single tyre so we could see how consistent I can be. Then this afternoon I wanted to get some new brake pads bedded in as Knockhill is notoriously hard on the brakes. Once I was happy with them I used the remaining time to confirm my race set-up before concentrating on posting some quicker laps at the end. Our set-up for the rest of the weekend is looking good. I’m really happy with the Pirelli tyres and I’m enjoying riding the Airwaves Ducati 1098R.” Following his first day at Knockhill on a Ducati, Leon commented, “I used the session this morning to basically find my feet and gain a good level of understanding of how the Airwaves Ducati works around here. In this afternoon’s practice I went for a long run of laps and still managed to improve upon my fastest time from this morning which I’m happy about. I now just need to get my head down and work on reducing my lap times further for qualifying tomorrow.” Qualifying for round 8 of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship commences tomorrow, Saturday August 9th 2008 at 1430. More, from a press release issued by Team Suzuki News Service: Rizla Suzuki’s Tom Sykes and Atsushi Watanabe got the eighth round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Knockhill off to a good start today with Sykes taking third place and Watanabe finishing in an encouraging 14th. The top 14 riders are covered by just over a second which shows just how close the on track action is at the undulating 1.3-mile Scottish venue. Sykes used both his Rizla Suzuki’s during the two dry 50-minute free practice sessions, working on different chassis settings. His Rizla Suzuki technicians have a direction to go in and a few more changes to make which will fine-tune the GSX-R1000 so that Sykes can make the most of its nimble chassis on this rider’s circuit. Watanabe concentrated on learning the difficult track as well as working on chassis set-up and engine braking on his Rizla Suzuki. He dropped his lap time by a quarter of a second between the two sessions and will improve further ahead of the singular 50-minute qualifying session tomorrow. Honda’s Leon Haslam was fastest. Jack Valentine – Team Manager Rizla Suzuki: “I’m pleased with how today has gone we are right up there at the sharp end as I expected. It is unbelievably close with just 0.002secs separating the top three. Our Rizla Suzuki is performing well and there is more to come. “Atsu has made progress today and is learning the track well. He isn’t too far away from a top ten, half a second would do it and that should come easily tomorrow, at the moment it is all going according to plan.” Free practice results: 1: Leon Haslam (Honda) 49.004 2: Shane Byrne (Ducati) +0.000 3: Tom Sykes (Rizla Suzuki) +0.002 4: Cal Crutchlow (Honda) +0.008 5: Michael Laverty (Suzuki) +0.193 6: Michael Rutter (Ducati) +0.317 7: Leon Camier (Ducati) +0.324 8: Billy McConnell (Kawasaki) +0.396 9: Scott Smart (Kawasaki) +0.494 10: Karl Harris (Yamaha) +0.537 14: Atsushi Watanabe (Rizla Suzuki) +1.176