Hill and Byrne the early leaders

Swan Yamaha rider Tommy Hill leads the British Superbike Championship after a dramatic opening round at Brands Hatch. The first two races of the season saw plenty of incident with Josh Brookes coming off worse as he highsided out of race one and was declared medically unfit to start in race two, despite the fact that he escaped reletively unscathed. It was a poor start to the season for Suzuki in general as their top points scorer was Jon Kirkham who finds himself tenth in the standings with eleven points on the board.

Returning former champion Shane Byrne fared much better for the HM Plant Honda team, picking up a win and a third place to secure second spot in the standings only four points behind leader Tommy Hill. There was also encouragement for Kawasaki, as Stuart Easton finished the first round in third place in the championship, all be it, a fair amount of amount of points back from Hill and Byrne.

Tinmouth set to make history

Jenny Tinmouth is set to make history this Easter weekend as she becomes the first female rider to race in the British Superbike Championship. The thirty one year old from Ellesmere Port is hoping she can mix it with the rest of the field and show that women need not be discouraged from Motorcycle Racing.

Jenny will compete on the Aprilia RSV-4 for the Splitlath Motorsport team alongside experienced campaigner, Hudson Kennaugh. Here's hoping she has a successful season and picks up some strong results.

Excitement builds...

It's under a week until the start of the 2011 British Superbikes Championship and as usual there's plenty to be getting excited about. As is traditional in the championship, the first race of the season kicks off at Brands Hatch, around the Indy Circuit.

At this stage of the season most of the teams will be ironing out any little niggles and preparing for the start of the Brands Hatch weekend.

You can catch all the action on British Eurosport with highlights being shown on ITV1 and ITV4.

Big lineup for BSB

The British Superbike season begins on the 22nd April at Brands Hatch and the lineup, as in previous seasons, looks impressive. 38 riders will line up on the start line of the first Superbike race of 2011 with eight nations represented and seven manufacturers. Click here for the official full entry list.