New sponsor helps McAdoo get revved up for new season

DUNGANNON’S Stephen McAdoo is revved up and raring to go for the new Ulster Superbike Championship season, which gets underway today at Bishopscourt.

The 32-year-old enjoyed a largely positive season last term, which peaked with a podium finish in the premier superbike class before a nasty crash called time on 2021 due to a broken shoulder socket.

Fully recovered from that off, McAdoo’s plans for 2022 have been boosted by the support from a new sponsor, Carrickmore firm, Ecohog, who along with Connolly’s Service Station and IMR Automation will ensure he is on track for the season ahead.

“Ecohog are coming on board to fund the thing a lot better this year, which I am extremely grateful for,” beamed McAdoo. “It was a big surprise but it’s taken the pressure off and it lets me focus on what I’m there to do.

“Tyres are the killer for me, so this will take so much pressure off and I can’t thank Declan McNally and Paul McCallen enough for their support.

“It’s going to make such a difference and it will allow me to do things better. Last year, for example, we’d have been cutting corners and trying to make tyres last and not really being able to go the full way with it, but hopefully this year we will be able to because we’ll be better equipped.”

As well as having more substantial backing off the track, McAdoo feels he’s in the best shape possible to perform on it. 2021 was looking like being his best ever in the premier class until that painful off at Kirkistown, but he has regrouped since then and is raring to go on Saturday.

“Last season was one of ups and downs!,” he exclaimed.

“I started off a wee bit slow but I started getting some mementum and I got a podium. It was going well until that round at Kirkistown when I came off and that wrote it off, but that as a disaster of a day from start to finish. I was having problems with the bike and it was a bad way to finish the season. But since then I’ve been training really hard, far more than I’ve ever done and I’m looking forward to having a good run.”

Looking ahead to the new season, McAdoo is again expecting Carrickfergus’s ‘Wee Wizard’ Alastair Seeley to be the man to beat and while Cookstown’s Gary McCoy will sit out round one as he’s getting married on today, he too will be a front runner in 2022, but McAdoo believes he can also challenge regularly at the front end of the pack.

“Alastair Seeley will always be the man to beat,” he added. “I think you can’t look past him and he’s going to be a wee bit ahead of us because he’s been a professional bike racer all his life. But after that, I don’t see any reason why we can’t be best of the rest and try to fill that shoe.”

Alongside McAdoo, Dungannon’s Adam Crooks and Adam Brown, Omagh’s Jamie Lyons and Killyman’s Cameron Dawson, who will ride a 700cc supertwin, are expected to be amongst a host of local riders competing at Bishopscourt on Saturday.