By Having been one of the undoubted stars of last year’s Manx Grand Prix, courtesy of third place finishes in the Junior and Senior races, Joe Akroyd is setting his sights this year, on competition for the first time at the TT Races.
Remaining with the Australian based Oilee Racing team, he’s set to pilot at TT 2017, GSX-R 600 and GSX-R 1000 Suzuki mounts, in the RST Superbike, Monster Energy Supersport, Royal London 360 Quantum Superstock and Pokerstars Senior races.
Tipped to have an extremely bright future on the Mountain Course, his first venture into action at the most famous road race in the world, will be watched closely by many.
Following the 2016 Manx GP, Joe moved out to South Melbourne in Australia and has since been working with Oilee Racing.
His story since then, in Joe’s own words, is as follows:
“We entered the Phillip island Classic again this year and finished 5th in the premier forgotten era class, on a bog standard GSX 1100 Suzuki, a bike that we knew was always going to struggle to be competitive. We were over the moon with the result based on our machinery.
Our Main goal at the moment is preparing for the TT this year. We made the decision to jump to the TT after our success last year.”
Joe went onto add:
“We want to be in the premier class, and feel that we deserve to be in that paddock. We’ve put our entry in and built a Suzuki GSXR 1000 that we will be sending over in a crate early next month.
I will be riding for the Oilee Racing Team again this year on both the 1000 and the 600.
We’re currently in talks with a couple of different headline sponsors and look forward to letting everyone know who’s on board in the near future.
We’re going to be the only Australian based team to be making the trip and certainly the only Australian based team to be sending a bike!
I’ve also had some exciting conversation’s regarding the Classic TT in August and look forward to what will develop.”
Words by Stevie Rial
