'I wanted something that can win races' - Irwin on BSB deal

Andrew Irwin has explained that he "wanted to be on something with the potential to win races" as he revealed that he will run his own team and campaign a Ducati V4 in this year's British Superbike Championship.

The 30-year-old parted company with the Honda Racing team after three years with the Louth-based outfit at the end of last season and now with the support of title sponsors will compete under the banner of MET fonaCAB Racing.

"I'd been with Honda for the past few years and I was like, 'What do I do next?'. I felt I really needed something new," Irwin told BBC Sport NI.

"I had options to join what I might respectfully term a 'B' team, but I wanted to be competitive and have something that could win races and I thought the best way of going about it was for myself and MET and Fonacab to run a Ducati.

"I believe that gives me the best opportunity to do that, working with the best people, and I can't wait to go racing."

Irwin says the period after he was released by Honda was "an anxious period" but he "always felt like he had a lot of unfulfilled potential".

Irwin began his BSB career on board a Ducati in 2018 and then switched to Japanese manufacturer Honda for 2019 and 2020.

"I always craved that feeling of a Ducati, then it was a V-Twin, whereas now it's a V4, so it's a slightly different bike, but it's still a Ducati.

"The DNA of each manufacturer stays quite the same and I've wanted that feeling again. The best way of showing my potential I believe is to ride a Ducati."

In 2019, the Carrickfergus rider secured his first BSB win and finished eighth overall in the series.

The following year he secured three further race wins and sixth overall in the standings.

His 2023 campaign was blighted by an arm injury sustained in testing but in 2024 he clinched several podium finishes.

In 2025 he picked up another injury at the opening round at Oulton Park but battled his way back to fitness to record a series of impressive results in the second half of the season.

The younger of the BSB Irwin brothers accumulated seven top-six finishes in eight races, including a second and two thirds at the Cadwell Park Bank Holiday round.

However a crash at Donington Park ruled him out of the final three rounds of 2025 with a significant elbow injury which required surgery.

"I had a pretty big injury in 2023 with my arm, which was probably worse than people knew about, and then injured my elbow in September, when I was in a really good run of form off a run of those three podiums at Cadwell and consistently in the top five on not necessarily the best bike to be on.

"I feel I was riding as well, if not better than anybody, and then the injury came, which was really unfortunate. It came at a really bad time, because it was also contract time as well."