Neave Twins
Tom’s been a busy bloke
Well, we’re another month closer to going racing again, and things are still nowhere near normal – the only thing that’s been flat out so far is work on the farm… and to be honest, I’ve actually been enjoying it a lot for the most part.
It’s been absolutely Baltic out, but we’ve been doing a load of proper hard, manual graft over the past month or so, mainly chainsawing and clearing fallen trees around the fields, generally just tidying up ready for summer. The cold dark mornings where you can’t be bothered to get out of bed have been putting me in a really good place, both physically and mentally. Usually this time of year is the quietest time for farmers, but it feels the pace hasn’t slowed down this year because we’ve had so much on. The cows have recently started calving as well which is nice to see, so I feel like the last couple of months have just flown by – which is ace, as it means we’re getting closer to round one.
Me and Tim have been lucky we’ve been able to do a little bit of riding with some flat track at the indoor on the CRF100s, and we made a turn track in one of the fields as well, which Dad absolutely loved… he shouldn’t be too upset though because really we’ve been doing him a favour, he won’t need to plough the field now that’s for sure. Problem is, the whole thing got waterlogged and then completely frozen so that’s not had as much use as we’d like!
As far as the proper bikes go, I’m not quite sure when exactly I’ll be sticking the helmet on, but I know that Ryo’s coming over in mid-March time, so I don’t think there will be much riding before then. He’s Honda UK’s new Japanese Superbike rider, and I spent a bit of time with him out in Portimao back in November. He’s a really nice bloke, even if his English isn’t exactly top notch just yet he’s promised to be fluent by the time he comes back (which means he’ll probably speak it better than I do). As far as his riding goes, he has an HRC contract so that says something. I expect once he figures Cadwell and Oulton Park out he will surprise a few people.
But it’s not all about the Superbike riders, because the Superstock class is shaping up to be the strongest it’s ever been, which in my opinion is a good thing. No one from last season has left the class and apparently there’s a couple of lads stepping down from Superbikes with the likes of Taylor Mackenzie and Keith Farmer. Me and Tim both have the continuity of staying with the same teams as well, which is perfect to build on the results we’ve already managed. It would also be great to repeat our Superstock 600 days where we managed to bag a 1-2 podium twice. We had a couple of 1-3 podiums last season but we can go one better! To be honest, I’m not really thinking about everyone else; my goal this year is to win the championship – that’s it, and with the time I’ve had on the Fireblade now, I really know we can do it. Hopefully, by the next time we speak, I can show off the new colour scheme as well…