By Phil Wain
May 3 2006

John McGuinness powered his way to a second successive fifth place, in round four of the National Superstock Championship, held at Oulton Park on Bank Holiday Monday. The HM Plant Honda rider was impressive throughout qualifying, around the 2.692-mile Cheshire circuit, and battled his way to fifth at the end of the 15-lap race to add another 11 points to his championship tally, moving him up to third overall in the title chase.

Having qualified his CBR1000RR Honda Fireblade in third place on the grid, with a time of 1m40.504s, the Morecambe rider was feeling confident going into the race, and was gunning for his first podium finish of the year. He made a good start but, as he later admitted, was ‘a little bit lazy’ going into the first corner, and the result was that he found himself down in eighth at the conclusion of the first lap.

As soon as the race settled down, after the pace car had been out for a couple of laps, John began to move forward, and was enjoying a good dice with Steve Allan and Adrian Coates. On the penultimate lap, race leader John Laverty crashed out and, after Coates tried to overtake McGuinness at Island Bend, he overdid it and also ended up in the gravel trap, losing John a bit of time and meaning that he couldn’t mount a challenge on Allan. Fifth place was another solid result, though, and moved him onto 40 points overall, elevating him from sixth to third in the championship table.

Speaking after another hard fought race John commented:
“Having qualified in third place, I’m a little disappointed not to have made it on to the podium today, as the Honda was working well all weekend. I’m still getting my head around the short 25-minute practice sessions, but we’re getting the best out of the bike, the chassis and the tyres, and we’ve managed to go fourth row, third row, second row and first row in the four meetings, which shows how much progress we’ve made. There’s a lot of fairing bashing and crazy riding going on out there and, although I got a good start when the lights changed, I was just too cautious in the first corner and that’s why I was back in eighth at the end of the first lap.

“I’ve got a lot of important meetings coming up, in the shape of the North West 200 and Isle of Man TT, and I’m putting a bit of pressure on myself, but the bike’s getting better and I’m getting better, and it’s another solid haul of points. There were a lot of crashes again today, but we brought the bike home in one piece, and moving up to third in the championship has been a boost - so we’re definitely in the right ball park. I’m really looking forward to the North West 200 now, which starts next week - the Superbike was flying in testing at Castle Combe, and I’m confident of being in the hunt for the victories in all of my races.”

The result sets him up nicely for his first pure road race of the year, the International North West 200, which takes place next week around the streets of Portstewart, Coleraine and Portrush. Practice for the event gets underway on Tuesday 9th May.