By Crew chief to National Superstock 1000 Championship front runner Franco Bourne, ‘Wavey Davey’ Dave Hewson is back on Mountain Course riding duties at TT 2023.
A TT competitor since 2007, his diverse road racing CV features top three finishes at two of Mexico’s top two-wheel racing events, the San Pedro Martir Hill Climb and Baja International Tourist Cup.
Regular on You Tube via his popular Obsession Engineering channel, he recently reflected on qualifying week and the impeccable weather implanted upon the Isle of Man.
“If the biggest complaint is the sun in your eyes, it’s going fairly well around the Isle of Man.
Conditions are near enough perfect, the irony is a hint of cloud cover would be nice but we’ll take this.”
“I think maybe only one or two years I’ve gone over 120 in practice, so, to do it half way through practice week is spot on.
I didn’t feel like I was pushing, they were quick but they were fairly smooth laps, calm.
So, there is more potential we’ve got some set-up changes and different bits this year and everything is working really well.”
21st fastest overall from Super Twin qualifying stints, Hewson couldn’t praise enough the nimble, great handling RS660 Aprilia.
“There was a couple of little niggles, that we only sorted out after TT last year.
So, we’ve got them sorted, we’ve actually got some tuning work done, so the bike is faster.
We’ve had more time to get the chassis working how we want them and that is the best handling bike I’ve ever ridden around here and I’ve rode quite a lot of bikes around here, it is absolutely perfect that thing.”
Commenting on aforementioned exploits with Franco Bourne, who is helping his regular crew chief at TT 2023, he jovially stated:
“He’s took to the big cc bike really, really well and obviously I’m going to claim all the credit for that, it’s all to do with the set-up and he should be very thankful he’s got Dave!”
Photo credit: Nick Wheeler
Words by Stevie Rial #dontletfearcontrolyou
