By Top five finisher times two from the opening Monster Energy Supersport, RST Superbike races, KTS Racing Powered by Steadplan’s Jamie Coward goes into tomorrow’s Royal London 360 Superstock, Carole Nash Super Twin races brimming with confidence.
Back on Thursday of last week, before the penultimate qualifying session, Road Racing News managed to gain an in-depth interview with the twice Privateers Champion.
Joining the 131 Mph Club yesterday, I asked the Hebden Bridge racer what are the main, different characteristics of his current CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP tackle in comparison to YZF-R1 Yamaha machinery, which he raced at last year’s TT.
“Just the speed of the thing in a straight line. If you looked at my speed trap times last year on the Yamaha, think it was like 184, eight or nine mph down.
If you look at this week’s speeds like what Pete’s (Hickman) been doing 200, 202 mph, if I was on that now, I would be 16, 17 mph down.
You are absolutely flat chat on them big things, up the Mountain Mile, Union Mills to Greeba Castle places like that, Ginger Hall to Ramsey as well, you’re losing time all the time so now we are not losing time, we are as quick as anyone else apart from Pete, who’s on a different planet on that thing.
Just the speed is such a big difference and the chassis, the Yamaha is such a user-friendly bike but it’s just the top end we’re we struggle a bit.”
Onto Twins, tyre talk.
“The Twin is how it was a few years ago, we are trying some slick tyres in it, seems to be working might be going back to treaded tyres for tomorrow (2nd June) but it’s going all right so far.”
“Always been on Metzeler, obviously turned full circle with Dunlop pulling out, a lot of people are still using Dunlop’s but Metzeler is the main brand now and it’s a big sponsor now at the TT and I’m one of their private sponsored riders shall we say, I’m happy with that.”
Featuring strongly in No Room for Error documentary series one, the now 14th fastest racer in TT history stated that it’s been good for his profile.
“It was good to be fair, at the time it was quite stressful because they were not following you around but they were, you tried to act natural but you couldn’t act natural when they stuck a camera in front of you.
You can see a couple of times on the actual filming were Dean (Harrison) and Lee (Johnston) got a bit annoyed with it, did get a bit annoying at times but it’s been good for my profile and good for the TT.
Just shows a different aspect, were not all like hair gel w*****s as they call them, were actually just normal human beings at the end of the day, that is what it put across I think to a lot of the people who might not see us.”
Photo credit: Mark Corlett
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
