Steady start for English brothers team

WITH youngest brother Robert still on the injured list, it was left to 19 year old Ballymena rider Christopher English to carry the flag for the English Brothers/Impressive Automatics team over the Easter weekend double header, at Bishopscourt and Kirkistown.

At Bishopscourt, on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, the GP125's had three races. On the Friday things went quite well in practice, but come the first race, the battery went dead on the second lap.

With the battery recharged for Saturday, Chris finished in fifth place in the first outing of the day, but was the fourth GP125, as Ryan Farquhar is allowed to run his Moto450 along with the GP riders.

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In the final race of the day, the little Impressive Automatics Honda cut out, but as Chris was about to pull off the track, it fired up again. He carried on, eventually ending the race in 12th place, 11th GP bike. The fault was finally traced to a faulty earth wire.

The team then headed straight to Kirkistown, for the traditional Easter Monday meeting. Chris was well in contention in the first race, but made a slight mistake when trying to overtake another rider.

He ran wide, and touched the grass at the edge of the circuit. With the area around the circuit being waterlogged, it was enough to bring the Ballymena lad off. He was unhurt.

In the second race Chris more than made amends for his earlier mishap, when he finished in fourth place in the GP class, fifth on the road.

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Christopher said afterwards: “It was a bit frustrating over the weekend. We had a couple of silly wee things wrong, and they cost us dear.

“The battery just died in the first race, with no warning, We run a total loss ignition on both bikes, and apparently thats what it does. It just stops working. Later we had another problem, where the bike cut out and then started again. Later we found an earth wire that had the insulation broken. It’s possible that this is what caused our problem.

I was annoyed with myself for crashing at Kirkistown. It was very windy, and a couple of times on the back straight I was blown across the track. My crash, I just run out wide, and onto the edge of the grass. It was like a lake, and I fell as soon as I hit the water,” he added.

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