ROUND five of the 2006 British Superbikes at Mond-elo Park in Ireland was abandoned without a race taking place.

Early indications that the Sunday morning rain would soon disappear were dispelled with near monsoon prevailing conditions.

Many teams elected to give the morning practice a miss with others returning to the pits after one lap.

The teams that did attempt to adapt to the conditions paid the ultimate price and ended up on the floor.

Following several valiant attempts to re-schedule the times and reduce race distance, the final directive was to abandon all racing.

The amount of water streaming and pooling on the track would have made the conditions extremely dangerous and the Championship race director called the abandonment in the interests of rider safety.

The previous two days in the dry worked well for Saturday's qualifying with Simon And-rews on his Piranha Racing Yamaha consistently running in the top three.

However, with six minutes remaining, two riders went down in front of the Wickham-ford racer while he was on his flying lap and the session was stopped.

Everyone was out again within four minutes but the qualifying tyre had past its best and the team had no option but to watch as other riders pushed the team back to ninth - still only eight tenths of a second off pole.

Team manager Andy Colbo-urne said. "It's unfortunate for the thousands of race fans that the event was cancelled but it was the right call to make. Bikes can be replaced far easier than riders."

Piranha Racing will next be in action at Mallory Park on June 4 with Andrews also at the Isle of Man TT on Wednesday, June 7 alongside Jason Grif-fiths.