Lyons finishes with podium finishes

JAMIE Lyons crowned a sensational season in the Honda British Talent Cup with two podium finishes at Donington Park last weekend when he finished fourth overall and the top privateer rider in the series.

The talented 16-year-old who is the tallest and subsequently the heaviest rider in the class has had to battle all season against smaller and lighter opponents who can accelerate faster on their little Moto3 machines and reach a higher top speed.

But time and again, the Omagh lad has defied the odds with some supreme riding, particularly in the corners, to make a mockery of the power to weight ratio and he did so again over the weekend. The Omagh Academy pupil was mixing it with the pace-setters during qualifying and he continued in that vein in both races, finishing third twice. And had his exhaust not fallen off on the last lap of the final race of the season, he could well have claimed second.

“I went with the front two boys and had a massive gap of about six seconds back to fourth and then with about six laps to go I started getting a wee bit less power and I thought nothing of it because it had got very windy,” Jamie said.

“But then on the last lap I got a bad vibration and the next thing the exhaust was looking at me and then it came off with half a lap to go, so that was a very loud 40 seconds!”

FULL STORY IN THIS WEEK’S ULSTER HERALD