When you were growing up in Northern Ireland, motorcycle road racing would have been around culturally with a lot of the local road’s events. Did you have much of an interest in your early years, and if so did you have any racing heroes or folks you looked up to?
‘We started by riding our bikes to the big road races, UGP and NW200 and it developed from there, production racing on RD350's was popular everywhere so it was accessible for us as most of us had one. We lived and breathed motorcycles where I lived, a big bunch of us hanging around the shops daring each other to see who could get their knee down around the estate and usually ended in a race down back roads where I now live. Some of us got into racing as it was safer than racing up those country lanes. We all wanted to race in the Wrangler Pro-Am series on Grandstand, Kenny Irons,
Ray Swann and a young fella called Niall Mackenzie had
us all glued to the TV every week’.
At 54 racing, you are now heavily involved with KTM in
development and also the KTM RC 390 R series. For this
series what do you think it takes to succeed in the class
and what do you think about the ability level having been
out biting handlebars with some of the young team in
the Italian CIV series?
‘Like any national race series today, they are all very
competitive and not easy to make a name for yourself
so perseverance is key. The CIV in Italy is like CEV in
Spain, very high level and even the German
Championship - IDM produces junior riders that
are very close to World level riders, the front riders in
these classes are competitive in World SSP300. The
junior ranks in BSB are becoming more competitive,
production racing is more easily accessible to
young riders wanting to get into the sport’.