Ryan Vickers was the rider to beat in the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch, celebrating a treble victory and now heading towards Thruxton this weekend (August 9/10/11), the OMG GRILLA Yamaha Racing rider is determined to continue the winning momentum.
Vickers holds sixth in the standings ahead of this weekend and arrives in Hampshire with confidence high as he bids to close the deficit to the reigning champion Tommy Bridewell at the top of the standings.
Vickers was on the podium at the circuit last year, but knows that the circuit was a strong circuit for Yamaha in the past, including last season’s treble for Jason O'Halloran on the McAMS Yamaha.
Vickers said: “I am feeling really good for Thruxton; it has always been one of my favourite circuits on the calendar. It always bring great memories back to me after the first time I jumped on a Superbike there and it just opened my eyes to being over 100mph, spinning the bike sideways, drifting, smoking the tyre - it’s such a cool quirky little place that you don’t get anywhere else!
“Last year on the Yamaha, I was actually a little bit disappointed with our results. We managed one podium and two other top five finishes, which is still a solid weekend. I really thought going there, to what’s known as a Yamaha circuit, I expected to be fighting for the podium and battle for the win every lap, but we just missed a little bit with the set up in the last three laps.
“I’m really looking forward to going back there this year as we’ve improved the bike massively. We’ve got some more items from Yamaha as well for this year that Jason had last year, so I really think that the bike we will be those three four or five laps better than what it was last year. To be honest we managed to lead near enough every other lap of the race and we just missed them last few laps last year, so if we can get them I think we can have a very different Thruxton.
“Coming off the back of Brands Hatch and a triple win is amazing; it helps the whole team, it helps me, gives us all confidence, gives us all belief. It really shows us what we’re capable of doing, so I look forward to trying to keep that going at Thruxton and there’s no reason why not. That is my goal -I’m going to go there to try to win all three races again and let’s really get this championship back on a roll.”