By Agonisingly close to Privateers Championship success in 2016 and 2017, PreZ Racing’s Jamie Coward finally added his name this week to the TT Privateers series honours list, after a quite brilliant TT 2019 campaign.
8th within Monday’s RST Superbike race, leading the Yamaha challenge, the opening Monster Energy Supersport encounter yielded another very creditable eighth place finish.
With the seemingly unbeatable inclement weather embarking upon Manx shores, race organisers made the bold decision to hold for the first time five races in a day on Thursday.
Hebden Bridge’s Coward who would be sampling three of the five scheduled races, was pretty confident of contending for various strong results, including within the Bennetts Lightweight class, which he headed in practice week.
Speaking prior to the race, the main goal for Coward was to join the TT podium finishers circle.
He candidly stated:
“The 650 Twin that I’m riding for KTS, KTS Racing, Simon Bleasdale, Kevin & Tony Morris have built the bike and it’s fantastic. Soon as I jumped on it in pre-season testing in Spain, it was amazing.
So fingers crossed, main aim for that race if we can lap at that sort of pace, 120 mph laps, just keep consistent for four laps, and keep going for four laps and we should be in with a shout for a podium hopefully, fingers crossed.”
Photo by Mark Corlett
Coward’s prediction of contending for a podium placing, came true and some, as the multi Senior Classic TT runner up finished after a race long battle with Michael Dunlop, just 1.3 seconds behind the now 19 times TT winner.
Although disappointed at not banking a first TT victory, it was still a massive achievement for the KTS Racing supported competitor, who’s a very select group of racers to banked a podium finish at the world’s most famous, historic, illustrious roads meeting.
Prior to securing his maiden TT rostrum finish, the corresponding Monster Energy Supersport race 2 saw him claim an impressive top five finish in front of class lap record holder Michael Dunlop.
Whilst the following RL360 Superstock race, would see him once again head the Yamaha challenge on route to finishing ninth in front of TT winners Gary Johnson and Lee Johnston.
Coward’s tumultuous TT 2019 race week concluded in style, with another top eight finish, along the way joining the 130 mph club, lapping at 130.317 mph, which makes him officially now the quickest Yamaha mounted racer in TT history.
Photo by Nick Wheeler
Always regarded amongst International Road Racing’s most highly rated next gen racers, it’s been great to see the ever enthusiastic Coward come on leaps and bounds at TT 2019.
A non starter for today’s Billown based Post TT Races, it’s fair to say that Coward, the PreZ Racing, KTS Racing squads, all deserve some chill out time and a beer or two!
Words by Stevie Rial
