By Rising Oliver’s Mount force Mike Norbury made a consummate 1000cc roads debut at the 67th Scarborough Gold Cup, showing solid pace throughout aboard ECTA Racing’s S1000RR BMW.
Getting to grips with the new steed throughout practice and qualifying, the first legs of the Solo Open A and Senior races provided mixed fortunes for the Lancashireman.
Involved in a fairly low speed incident near the completion of lap one in the Solo Open A encounter, the following eight lap Senior race saw Mike secure a very creditable sixth place finish, along the way lapping under the 1 minute 50 second mark.
Reflecting on his first weekend of 1000cc competition at Scarborough, he stated:
“Had a good run on the BMW for the first time, qualified 9th, Open race was in a group but had a small off got back out for senior qualified 7th and finished 6th, plus qualified 11th for the gold cup feature race.”
Adding his thoughts on the David Jefferies Cup Supersport A races, which yielded series of tenth place finishes on his own teams YZF R6 Yamaha, Mike said:
“The 600 didn’t really go to plan, a bad qualifying landed us 18th managed to get back up to 10th in first race.
Then the second race I ruined the start trying to start it like the BMW and ended up at the back into first corner but managed to get back up to 10th.
Not where I wanted to be but there’s always next year. Overall I had a really good weekend with ECTA Racing and did better than I thought I would on the big bike.
We’ve got a lot of testing to do over winter and try to get used to swapping from 1000 to 600 which will start next weekend at the Anglesey Grand meeting.”
Words by Stevie Rial
