North West 200 Newcomer | Boothy’s Blog
Picture by Philip Magowan / Double Red
For the last five years, I?ve been desperate to compete in the International North West 200. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, it?s never happened? until this year, when I finally made it over to ?The Triangle?. Â And I loved every second of it; well nearly every second.
The NW200 is traditionally run just a few weeks before the Isle of Man TT which has, in the past, put me off entering slightly; when you?re competing as a privateer, there?s always the risk of something going wrong and scuppering your TT plans, when you?ve only got a few weeks between events. It might be a crash and a written off bike, or a broken leg, or it might just be a catastrophic engine failure. When it?s just you, your old man and a couple of mates, and you don?t have a massive budget, overcoming ?challenges? like that can be almost impossible.
But at the same time, because of the fact that the TT is so soon after the NW200, it means the NW200 is a fantastic shake-down/warm-up, for the TT. So I decided to make it happen.
As a newcomer, you can only start three races in a day, and there?d be three ?big bike? races on the Saturday, so I decided to leave the Triumph at home and just take the Kawasaki ZX-10R. I could enter the Kawasaki in the Superbike and Superstock races? so I did.
Practice was to start on the Tuesday but we sailed over on the Sunday before, as there was quite a bit of admin to do on the Monday, including signing on, a newc...
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