Photo - Lee Costello riding in the MOTOSTAR championship in 2006.
James Rose, aged 18 from Doncaster, has experienced BSB meetings in the past, with Virgin R6 Cup races, until he decided to concentrate on the ACU Star Championship in 2006. Winning all, except the first round where he recorded his only ‘dnf’, although this does not show how hard to achieve his race wins were. Rose, competing in the National Superstock Championship on a Suzuki K7 continued to improve throughout the weekend. Qualifying in 11th and within a second of the pole position time, 10th fastest in morning warm-up, all on a machine that hadn’t turned a wheel until day 1 of Round 1! The race provided yet more improvements as he worked his way up to 6th. Llewellyn said, “I was very impressed with James in last years ACU Star Championship, achieving this fantastic result just underlines the abundance of talent he has, very keen and easy to work with.”
Lee Costello, aged 20 from Bolton suffered from problems with the front forks on his Honda RS125, many different settings were tried, but the machine could not give Lee enough confidence to try as hard as he wanted, but still qualified in a very respectable 15th on the grid for his very first 125 GP British Championship race. Reverting to a completely standard set of forks on the Sunday evening, a set Lee was more familiar with, instantly gave the improvement he was looking for, his first ‘flying lap’ of Monday morning Warm-up was quicker than any previous lap for the whole weekend and by the time the session was over he had recorded a lap three quarters of a second quicker!
With the problems encountered throughout practice, 13th in the Race was a fair result, however, with the times recorded in Monday warm-up, Lee would have been higher up the grid and could have become involved in the titanic battle, ahead of him, dicing for the places between 6th and 12th! Sawford said, “To have come away from Brands with points is a bonus, bearing in mind the problems encountered, but now Lee has the forks he is confident with, Thruxton should be much more satisfying.”
Jim Parker said, “Seeing both James and Lee score points in their first British Superbike meeting is extremely rewarding. It has provided confirmation that last years ACU Star Championship was a much-needed bridge between the Club Championships and British Championship level.
My thanks must go out to Matt, Steve and their ‘colleagues’, Clive Horton, Nigel Bosworth and Shaun Brown, the work they put in with the ACU Academy has proved very worthwhile and achieving these results will only increase the enthusiasm for the new ACU Dunlop Tyres MotoStar Cup.”
The second round of their Championships will be at Thruxton, Nr Andover, Hampshire on 13th – 15th April 2007.
If you require any further information on this press release please contact Brian George, ACU Press Officer on 01788 566428 or via e-mail [email protected].