By Phil Wain
May 15 2006

Martin Finnegan and the Klaffi Honda/Alpha Boilers team had a day to forget in Northern Ireland on Saturday, with ninth place being his best finish of the day at the International North West 200 road races. The Lusk rider was blighted by a combination of poor grid positions and mechanical misfortune and, although he finished three of his races inside the top twelve, they weren’t the finishes he was looking for, and two further retirements did little to help his mood.

Despite perfect weather conditions on both Tuesday and Thursday evening on the Causeway Coast, Martin encountered a few problems during practice, which prevented him from being higher up the grid. He was as high as sixth at one stage in the Superbike class, but he overshot one of the chicanes when on a fast lap and this, combined with a few riders putting in fast laps late in the session, bumped him back down the order to 12th, with a speed of 117.967mph. Both the Supersport and Superstock machines were beset by suspension problems, and he was back down in 26th place for both classes, so it was a busy week all round for the Klaffi Honda team.

The opening Superbike race would prove to be his best finish on the day and, although a little bit down on top speed, he was able to take a solid ninth place - and he rode equally well in the following Supersport race. Despite being so far back on the grid, the 25-year-old fought through the field to claim 11th place at the chequered flag, only six seconds adrift of 8th place. Things took a turn for the worse in the Superstock race, when the gear linkage broke on the opening lap, and then continued on their downward spiral in the feature NW200 Superbike when, having made a good start from the fourth row of the grid, the clutch broke on the first run down to University Corner. However, his day finished on a more positive note when he claimed another 11th place finish in the second Supersport 600cc race.

After a tough week of racing, a disappointed Martin commented:
“It’s fair to say today has been a bit of a disaster for me, and to say we’ve had a problematical week would be an understatement. We struggled throughout practice with the suspension on all of the bikes, and we were unfortunate to get caught out with the red flags and stoppages, which meant I had very poor grid positions in both the Supersport and Superstock races. It was always going to be difficult to get a half decent result from being that far back, but I did the best that I could, and a pair of elevenths wasn’t too bad considering where we started.

“The Superbike was down a little bit on top speed, but we know we’ll have a stronger and faster engine ready for the TT - although I would still have liked to have achieved better results today. The TT is my main event of the year, but I would still have preferred to have had a more successful day here at the North West 200 but, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Hopefully, all of our bad luck is behind us now and we can have a strong TT - I’m confident that we’ll be right up there once we get going, and if we can improve upon our results from last year, it should be a good week.”

The opening practice session for the Isle of Man TT Races takes place on Saturday 27th May, with the opening race, the Superbike, taking place a week later on the 3rd June.