Gary Johnson
There’s no rest for the wicked as Gaz enjoys some time off and sorts out his 2019 rides.
After having a right blast last month at the international press launch for the Triumph Scrambler 1200 I wasn’t home long before I flew back off, this time over to Canada with the girlfriend, Freddie, to see my old mate and sparring partner Kenny Gilbertson and to do a spot of snowboarding. Kenny and me raced together for years in the MRO Championship and then went to the British Championship at the same time. Don’t tell him I said so, but he was actually really good on a bike. He left seven years ago to live in Canada where he is now a snowboard instructor, which was really handy as we managed to blag some lift tickets off him. We had a great holiday and spent New Year over there so that was great.
Again, I wasn’t home for long before I had to get back on a plane and fly down to Majorca for the new Street Twin 1200 launch. Much like the Scrambler launch that we were on last month, we have been taking the journos from all over the world out on some awesome routes and showing off the new model. And it’s another great fun bike with a massively torquey engine (I’m hoping Triumph keep inviting me to these events… can you tell?).
Once we are finished over here, I’ll be going straight to a dealer launch where I’ll be announcing that I will be competing in the 765
Challenge with No Limits Racing next year (it will have probably happened by the time you are reading this). I’m also building a Kawasaki ZX-10R test bike, with the help of Nick Morgan from MSS Kawasaki and Steve Heneghan of Reactive Parts, so I hope to have that ready to go testing on in the next few months, and I may even race it in a few rounds of the No Limits race series, too. It’s great at No Limits because they have sprint races as well as endurance races, so it’s a great way to get my riding up to scratch ready for a season on the roads. In the past few years I haven’t done anywhere near as much riding as I’ve wanted to and still had reasonable results, so the plan this year is to get out on a bike as much as I can. That way, when it comes to the big races of the season I’m hitting the ground running.
I have pencilled a deal with Lee Hardy to ride his Superstock and Superbike again, with a view to going out to Spain with them for the official BSB over there and the first two rounds of the British Superstock Championship, which I’m really looking forward to. After that it will be the North West 200 and the Isle of Man TT.
There are a few bits going on with my own Triumph 675, too, so that should be ready to take over to the NW200 and TT soon. It’s been really busy over the past month or so and with the season just around the corner it doesn’t look as though it’s going to get any less busy any time soon – but I can’t wait ’coz I think it’s going to be a good ’un.