Rory Skinner reflects on “challenging” 2024 BSB season

2024 saw Rory Skinner taste victory for the first time in the British Superbike Championship, but it also saw him held back by injuries.

By the end of the year, Skinner’s run of injuries meant that — although he won at Knockhill — he ended the year 17th in the standings, and on the same points as BSB Pathway Champion Lewis Rollo.

Of the 32 races run in 2024, Skinner only finished nine inside the points, and the season-closing Brands Hatch weekend was the sixth round of 11 from which Skinner took no points after crashing in Race 2 and withdrawing from Race 3.

“Not the way I wanted to end my season, obviously,” Skinner told Crash.net after the final BSB round of the year at Brands Hatch, where he crashed in Race 2 on Sunday and withdrew from Race 3.

“I crashed in the first race this morning and gave my ribs and my lungs a battering.

“So, we decided it would be best not to do the last race, we didn’t have much to gain, a lot more to lose. So, we’ll try to come back fit next year and have a good run at it.

“It’s been a bit of a difficult year anyway. The good bits have been good, the bad bits have been bad; it’s certainly been a challenging year.

“But, if I look at the positives: I was the only BMW to win a race this year in British Superbikes; first year on the bike; first year with a lot of my personnel working on the bike.

“So, it’s good, it’s nice to see that there was definitely some progression when things were good.

“Just kind of ‘wrong place, wrong time’ has been the story of my season.”

Skinner is yet to confirm his 2025 plans, but was relatively unconcerned about having something ready for next year.

“Obviously, not sorted anything out yet,” he said, “but things are all kind of in the works of being sorted out. So we’ll see how things go over the next month or two.”