Gary the ‘real McCoy’ on North West debut

AS far as debuts go, Gary McCoy’s maiden run at the North West 200 couldn’t have gone much better.

The Cookstown man finished 12th and eighth in the Milltown Service Station and JM Paterson Supertwin races plus 12th and 14th in the Strain Engineering and Tides Restaurant Supersport events aboard MadBros Racing Kawasaki and Yamaha machinery, which saw him crowned the newcomer of the meeting, much to his surprise and delight.

“It’s a bit mad, I can’t believe it!” exclaimed the 26-year-old.

“It’ll probably sink in when I get back to work but it’s fairly surreal!”

Having long held ambitions to compete at the North West 200, McCoy admits that he has driven the famous 8.97 miles Triangle numerous times, but nothing prepared him for the feeling of racing it on a bike alongside some household names.

“I’ve been round it all my life, going up and down to the North West but it’s totally different on a bike,” he explained.

“I thought it would be difficult to learn or daunting, but I don’t know if it’s because I wanted it so much but I found it relatively easy.

“It’s a funny one because it’s fairly simple to learn but obviously we’re not up to the speed of the boys at the front but you have to walk before you can run.

“I was riding around with [Peter] Hickman thinking ‘should I even be here!.’

“I was so tense, I gave myself arm pump and I had to drop back because it’s totally different to anything I was used to because one lap is nearly the length of a short circuit race here!

“But when you’re on the bike at the North West you basically have to tuck yourself in as tight as you can to try to get as much speed as possible.

“It’s not that physical in terms of throwing the bike around, but the heavy braking takes a bit of getting used to but I think we did all right.”

McCoy’s debut week at the North West on his MadBros machines couldn’t have begun in much more difficult conditions with rain on Tuesday and for the first races on Thursday, which resulted in the first Supertwin race being postponed, but he took that in his stride before excelling in the Saturday sunshine.

“When we were sitting on the grid waiting for the Supertwin race on Thursday, I saw a load of the top boys pulling off the grid and I was just thinking ‘you have wet tyres, it’s a wet track, the tyres are there to be used, go out and race’. If you’re not sure, the throttle goes both ways!,” he laughed.

“But it probably wasn’t a bad thing the Supertwin race was cancelled on Thursday because Saturday was the first day I could really learn and it gave me an extra dry race.”

McCoy will now return his focus to the remainder of the USBK season but hopes to squeeze in one BSB round before the season ends, budget allowing.

Meanwhile, Dungannon’s Burrows Engineering/RK Racing team picked up a podium finish on Thursday in the opening Supersport race through 58-year-old Jeremy McWilliams, who took eighth on the Saturday, while in the Superbike class Dominic Herbertson rode the big Suzuki to 13th place.

Things didn’t go quite so well for Cookstown’s McAdoo Kawasaki team last week, with Adam McLean’s fourth place finish in Thursday’s Supersport race their highlight as retirements blighted the Toome man and Michael Dunlop’s efforts.

And there was frustration for Ryan Farquhar on Saturday when the JMcC Roofing team’s Supertwin Kawasaki prepared by the Dungannon legend was disqualified after Richard Cooper had won both races.

The decision by the stewards was after a protest by the KTS Racing team and a statement from the organisers said the bike had been excluded from the results ‘because of a modification to the machine’s frame, which is deemed to be against the rules by the stewards of the meeting’, much to Farquhar’s chagrin.

“Totally gutted for our sponsors and especially Richard Cooper,” Farquhar fumed on Social Media on Sunday. “The fella rode the wheels of the wee bike and had no performance gain whatsoever with the way the fairing was mounted.

“It’s no surprise to me as I and my team have been discriminated against for years. All I can say at this stage I’ve lodged an appeal as team manger.

“Right now I feel like I can’t take anymore of this.”

Farquhar has set up a gofundme campaign to fight the decision in order to get Cooper reinstated as the winner of both races.