dewalt tools : Austin Powered Racing’s

The Tandragee 100 in a stereo typical Irish road race down narrow, bumpy, undulating roads and it is certainly not a circuit for the faint hearted. “I thought it was really good; a few people gave me their own impressions of the circuit and didn’t fancy it,” said McBride, “So I thought I’d make of it what I would and I didn’t see it was that bad compared to the local roads that I used to ride around my home town. I went out for two laps on the moped and then a lap on the tour bus and went straight out in practice, had a look and loved it.”

Due to a lack of time the team opted to run the Pete Beale supplied Superstock machine in the two big races instead of the Superbike. McBride had to start the Junior race from the back row of the grid as they had a bit of a saga during qualifying, “The Junior practice we missed, they just shut the gates and put the pad lock on and walked away. So we had to try and get a grid position for that on the merit of our Senior race qualifier,” he explained.

Red flags at a road race are never a good thing, however at the Tandragee they played into Austin Racing’s hands, “We made the start of the Junior race and it was red flagged when I was twenty fourth, so they moved me up to twenty fourth position. Then it was a short sprint of three laps and I finished fifteenth, so I was happy with that. The Senior race we qualified twelfth and finished ninth, so top ten – great! Wasn’t expecting a top ten first time there” grinned McBride.

The team then moved to the famous triangle circuit on the north coast of Ireland for the Kennedy International North West 200. Practice and qualifying for the event had numerous red flags, but McBride kept his cool and put his Superbike on the sixth row of the grid and the Superstock machine on the fifth row.

The DeWalt Performance Tools Superbike Race was the first big race of the day. “Race one, I made not a bad start, knuckled down and realised into the second lap I was over geared and my suspension needed a couple of tweaks. Then there were people crashing and retiring and I didn’t want to get into a tangle with anyone. I haven’t had a lot of time on the bike, so to come in eleventh and do a 4min 33sec lap, I was happy,” said McBride, who also was the top finishing Yamaha in race one.

The CP Hire Limited Superstock race didn’t go quite according to plan and resulted in a DNF. “I was having a good scrap with Burrows and Adrian Archibald. I went underneath Adrian as he ran deep at the roundabout. I got my head down and went down the straight and thought “There is something wrong with my bike.” So I nursed it down the straight, analysed it over the link road and then Ballysally I thought “I’ll gas it again” but it wasn’t quite right. So I thought I’ll retire, I’ll pull in when I get back round. So a bit annoyed we didn’t get to finish the Superstock race as Pete Beale supplied the bike and it is awesome. I was just trying to preserve any damage that was done.”

The Blackhourse Finance North West 200 feature race was to yield the best result of the day with McBride finishing in ninth place. “I was happy with that. Again knuckled down and then cleanly passed Adrian Archibald with the Team Yamaha. I was buzzing with that and then I was wondering where Guy Martin was on the AIM Yamaha, because I was the top finishing Yamaha in the first Superbike race and to reward my sponsors I wanted to do it again. Guy Martin had cleared off and he stomped home to fifth and I was scrapping with Porter and Thompson. I made a mistake and had to catch Thompson and now Hutchinson. I caught them and then my fuel light came on, so I thought rather than trying to finish seventh as I was running ninth, I’ll try and finish. I was really happy with my lap time of 4min 30secs as there were only three of us doing that time, so I was glad to get it into a 4min 30secs, which was only four seconds off Ian Lougher’s time on the works Honda” he concluded.

McBride and his Austin Powered Race team are now preparing for the Isle of Man TT races, practice commences on Saturday 27th May and race week commences on Saturday 3rd June.

By Louise Cain