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.