Neave twins

Tom’s bagged another great BSB ride.

This month’s been really eventful. In fact I think the whole season has been the weirdest one of my career so far. Just the other day I was prepping my Gixer for the next round of the British Superstock Championship, after standing in for the injured Jason O’Halloran on the Honda Racing Fireblade in British Superbikes, when I got another phone call. This time it was from Colin Wright, one of the most successful team bosses in BSB, who’s now in charge of the Halsall Racing team. He asked to see me and I had a feeling I knew what it was about, as their rider Chrissy Rouse had crashed at Cadwell and broken his wrists; I knew they would be looking for someone to step in.

I went to meet him and we had a real good chat, he asked me loads of questions and I think he sussed me out pretty quickly. We got on really well, and although there was no offer there and then, I got a call from him on the way home (once he had chatted to Martin Halsall, the team owner), and he invited me to ride their movuno. com Halsall Racing Team Suzuki GSX-R1000 at the next round at Silverstone.

I’m really looking forward to riding the Suzuki Superbike; the Honda was good, and the team were so professional, but I’m a little bit more used to riding Gixers, so I feel like I can hit the ground running on the Halsall Racing bike. And we are only using the Club Circuit at Silverstone too, so none of the other teams are going to have tons of data, which should even things out a bit. Oulton Park is the weekend after, so if all goes well at Silverstone I’m hoping they keep me on for that one too as I can’t see Chrissy being fit in time.

I’m going to go into it with the same calm and collected attitude I had at Cadwell, on the Honda. At Thruxton I was a bit too gung-ho and ended up crashing and looking like a bit of a tit. At Cadwell, I thought about things a lot more and learnt so much. There really is a lot more to riding a superbike than people think and when I went to Cadwell with the right attitude I ended up getting two points-scoring finishes – 15th and 12th.

I knew the Honda gig was only going to be until Jason was fit enough to ride again, but I got on really well with the team and really liked the bike so I’d love the opportunity to do something else with the guys from Louth.

While I’ve been living the high life as a factory Superbike rider, my twin brother Tim has been plodding along in the British Supersport Championship on the R6. In fact he has been doing mint, with a few top 10 finishes at Cadwell Park, but I’ll let him tell you more about that next month.

At home we have both been as busy as ever. We got everything harvested on the farm pretty early this year, but there’s still loads to do so we haven’t really stopped, with all the racing, training and working on the farm. Whatever I’ve been doing, though, I’ve been making sure my phone is turned on as the way this season has been going, I’m half expecting a call from Repsol Honda asking me to step in for an injured Marc Marquez at MotoGP… nothing would surprise me this year!