Omagh’s Jamie is ’taking positives’ from points scoring double

JAMIE Lyons is ‘taking the positives’ from a weekend that promised much and delivered a little at Thruxton during the latest round of the Pirelli National Superstock Championship.

The Omagh racer hit the ground running with a blistering opening lap during qualifying that had him sitting fourth.

Unfortunately, that was all he could muster as a hole in his bike’s radiator meant his session ended there and then and he had to settle for 15th on the grid.

All was not lost, however, as the 20-year-old then earned two points scoring finishes in 13th and 14th positions to cap a consistent weekend of performances.

“I’m taking the positives. I’ve had my two best results of the year, in the dry,” he observed.

“I really lost a session with the hole in the radiator, so that was annoying because I was fourth [fastest] at a stage and it felt really easy.

“I felt comfortable and I kind of found a bit of consistency.”

While happy with his overall performance at Thruxton, Lyons admits that he needs to improve his starts if he’s to get back into the top 10 over the remaining rounds of the series.

“The only annoying thing is my starts weren’t great,” he acknowledged. “That’s something for me to work on because at that level, you can’t go backwards on the first lap.

“I think in the first race I went from 16th to 21st on the first lap and the second race, I went from 18th to 21st but got back to 18th again by the end of the first lap.

“It leaves you with a lot of hard work to do during the first lap and in the second race a gap had formed. I got back to 18th, but 17th was 1.8 seconds ahead of me after the first lap.

“But I caught him with the ninth quickest lap time of the race, so I was happy with my pace, and I got to the front of the group for 14th by lap four or five.

“The battle for 10th was in front of me and I caught two seconds over three laps but I started to shred my tyres because of the effort over the first six or seven laps and that group got away from me.

“And after that I couldn’t really do much on my own but I’m happy enough, it’s two points finishes so it’s positive and the feeling is a lot better on the bike.”

Meanwhile, local trio Jack Burrows, Lewis Mullen and Adam Brown endured frustrating weekends at Thruxton.

Dungannon’s Brown, who races in the Quattro Group British Supersport Championship required hospital treatment after a nasty crash during race one on the Saturday when he proved to be collateral damage when another rider fell and took out in the process.

“[I was taken] to hospital as precaution for damage to my spleen with quite a lot of swelling on my abdomen but with later scans and tests we have been cleared with heavy bruising to my abdomen and fluid build up in my pelvis,” he explained following his discharge from hospital on Sunday.

“I will be resting up for the next few days and looking forward to Cadwell Park after a very tough weekend at Thruxton

“Can’t thank the medical staff and my team enough for the support they give me this weekend.”

Burrows and Mullen, meanwhile, were in R&G Talent Cup action over the weekend, with Burrows earning two points scoring finishes in 12th and 14th, while Mullen was left disappointed in 17th and 19th.

While disappointed to finish 14th in race one, Burrows performance in race two was exceptional.

After making a good start, the Cookstown High School pupil got tangled in a riders incident and had to run off track on the first lap, setting his airbag off in the process.

From dead last, he got his head down and managed to get to the front of the second group to take 12th.

Mullen was also disappointed by his firs race result but he felt he had ‘turned a corner’ ahead of race two, during which he improved to seal a 17th placed finish to take confidence from a weekend of ‘progress’, which is the Newmills lad’s main aim this year.

“The result doesn’t show the performance this weekend,” he said. “I worked my way to the front of the group into P12 on to the last lap but got slip streamed up the back straight, made up a few places in the last corner but got out dragged over the line just 0.3 seconds behind P12.

“A good weekend overall with lots of progress made and setting my fastest lap of the weekend in the last race. Progress is what we are after for our first season in this class and on these tracks and we achieved that this weekend.”