By blue2bikes
November 9 2004

It has been announced that MonsterMob owner Paul Bird has indeed changed sides for the British Superbike series 2005, switching to the Honda FireBlade.

Paul’s team, MonsterMob, will in fact enter a two bike set-up for the Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix on 20th November, with John McGuinness and Stuart Easton riding the Ducati 999 machines for the last time.

Shane Byrne racing in 2003 - photo by Raceline photography

This will be the last outing for Paul with the Ducati machinery, and will end an era of great wins by Paul’s MonsterMob team over the past four years – with the late great Steve Hislop winning the BSB championship, along with Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne winning the BSB the following year.

Paul’s team not only accomplished back to back wins with Steve and Shakey, but Stuart Easton won the British Supersport crown in 2002 - along with no less than 34 BSB wins and two World Superbike races at Brands Hatch in 2003.

Sean Emmett racing in 2004 - photo by Raceline photography

Finishing fifth overall this year, with Sean Emmett aboard the Ducati 999RS04 machine, Paul stated, “it was a difficult and hard decision to leave Ducati, but we needed a new challenge for 2005.”

Paul will be running a three bike team, and has already signed Gary Mason and Michael Laverty, with the third rider to be announced. Paul said that he is speaking with a number of riders for the vacant position, and hopefully everything will be concluded in the next few weeks.

He went on to say that he is looking forward to working with Honda again, having had a very successful relationship with them in the past.

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To buy the photographs shown above, visit Raceline Photography