More points in the bag for ‘Flyin Lyons’

JAMIE Lyons achieved a fourth consecutive points scoring finish in the Pirelli National Superstock Championship on Sunday.

The Omagh teenager has enjoyed a bright debut season onboard his Honda in the ultra-competitive support series of the Bennett’s British Superbike Championship and he is already sitting 15th in the overall standings. And he enjoyed a bright start to proceedings during the fourth round of the series at Snetterton, qualifying an eye-catching fifth in the wet conditions on Saturday before a disappointing start and some set-up issues saw him slip down to 13th in the early part of the race.

Fortunately, a red flag allowed Jamie and his team to rectify the problem and he was soon back in the groove after the restart, climbing back up from 13th to 11th to claim another satisfying points haul.

“[The set-up] effected my turning in on the bike but with the likes of Luke Mossey and David Allingham behind me I was going to go backwards in the dry,” he acknowledged. “But before the restart of the race we changed the suspension and it felt like I was back to my normal ways.

“Again though my start was just a wee bit off – that’s something I need to work on. But we still came away with five more points and we came here knowing half the grid had tested here in the past few weeks so we were aiming to come away with another solid performance and I’m over the moon to have added an 11th to the ninth and 10th [from Knockhill during the previous round]. I’m more than happy.”

Jamie, who up until this season, wasn’t best known for his qualifying exploits, is hoping to keep that particular fine run going next time out at Brands Hatch where he is keen to take a step forward with his starts.

“Normally I’m not good at qualifying but this year, bar Oulton when we had a mechanical, I’ve been 12th, seventh and now fifth, so at Brands we’re targeting third!,” he said with a laugh. “Qualifying has been one of my strengths this year so hopefully I can improve my starts.

“I was building real well in qualifying [at Snetterton], it was good in the wet and on the last lap I was like ‘right, let’s put a real tidy lap together’. It wasn’t an all-out effort, sliding all over the place, it was just nice and smooth, I hit all my markers and I think I took 2.8 seconds off my lap time on my last lap.

“I was only five hundredths off Davey Todd in qualifying and two tenths off second place, so it was good.”