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The winds that whipped Donington into submission yesterday had to be experienced to be believed.

The 125 race had to be cancelled amid fears that the little guys on the little bikes would be blown clean off track, giving some idea as to the ferocity of the weather around the Hollywood corner and down the hill at Craner Curves.

But even with the high winds, sweeping rain and plunging track temperatures nothing and nobody could get stop Shane 'Shakey' Byrne from bagging his second double victory of the year.

Now, I always get a little worried when a rider (be it Troy Bayliss in WSB, Casey Stoner in MotoGP or Shakey in BSB) racks up a large points lead because I know that there will be people out there who only decide on the potential excitement of a series by that very factor.

They think that if one rider looks as though they are running away up front then the races can't be very exciting. Thank goodness that things couldn't be further from the truth in this amazing year of motorcycle racing.

OK, so Shakey is doing everything right. He's bagging the wins on his Airwaves Ducati and when he can't stand on top of the podium he's settling for whatever he can get (he's the only rider in the top five of the series to have finished every race so far - and he's now won six out of the last eight races), but the fact that Shakey is away up front doesn't mean we haven't had some incredible action this year.

And one of the main protagonists of that action has been Leon Haslam. Donington is around 20 minutes from the Haslam homestead in Smalley, Derbyshire and Leon has been going there literally since he was a baby. His dad Ron raced there hundreds of times and because of Haslam Snr's race school (which Leon instructs at from time-to-time) and the fact that Leon has been racing since around 12 years old on track, he himself has lapped Donington thousands of times, too.

Why does knowing this matter? Well I think it's crucial to understand that Leon, like his team-mate Cal Crutchlow, Hydrex Bike Animal's James Ellison and Shakey's team-mate Leon Camier were all riding as hard as possible during that fantastic five back battle in the incredibly tough conditions. And that they all get the absolute best from their bikes. Any of these lads don't give a second-thought to rubbing fairings at 180mph plus.

Nobody was giving Shakey an easy time and if Leon H had managed to get off the line better then, as his lap times at the end of the first outing showed, he'd have been more than a match for Shane at the end.

In fact, if you look at the lap times and watch the races you'll see that things in BSB are much closer than the overall points table for the big bike class would suggest.

So if you've never watched a BSB race then psyche yourself up for the next round of the series from Snetterton in Norfolk in three week's time. The track is basically made up of two fast straights and a complicated series of corners known as the Bombhole.

Shakey will, of course, be trying to get away from the start but, added weight penalty or not - and for yesterday's races the Ducatis' minimum weight limits were adjusted to 175kg in qualifying and 170kg in the races with both to be reviewed again before the Snetterton round in an effort to ensure both the 1000cc four-cylinder machines and 120cc V-twins are level in performance terms - he'll have a swarm of fellow racers to deal with. It won't be pretty.

Tony Carter / Eurosport