‘You don’t get serious in this game’

A key factor in Vickers’ success over and above the belief the team have shown in him is the fact that he has multiple British Champion Roger Marshall as his mentor.

Speaking about their relationship, Marshall said: “We speak on the phone twice a week and we WhatsApp all the time. We both watch races over and over and we know where we can improve. We walk the track and we work on where we need tenth or two. A lot of work has gone into getting him to where he is. He’s got the talent and he’s got the speed he just needed refining.

“But you can ask anyone in the paddock, when I left Steve Rodgers McAMS team where I’d been for six years to go and work with Ryan Vickers they thought I was a complete idiot and that it was going to be the worst thing I’d done. But from the first time I saw him on a bike at Assen, I spoke to Roger Burnett and told him how I’d seen a special kid on a bike. From then on I’ve always watched him, I’ve got to know him, his family and he’s been brought up properly by his mum and dad. He’s always had the potential, he just need to focus a bit more.

“And the reason he’s so relaxed is because that’s what I’ve worked on. At the start he’d just get more and more serious and I said ‘we’ve got to get rid of that’ I told him, you don’t get serious in this game, instead you think how lucky you are to race a bike, and the fact that you’re doing it for a living. Put a smile on your face and think ‘wow, this is fantastic’. The more relaxed you are the faster you’ll be and it’s something I have to keep reminding him.”

‘Smile… and think ‘wow this is fantastic…’’