Thursday’s action at the 2015 North West 200 road races saw Keith Amor endure a tough day at the office as the Rig Deluge® Road Racing rider suffered a number of freak problems during the course of both qualifying and race day. Nevertheless, the Falkirk ace still posted a strong seventh place in the Supersport race to record yet another top ten International race finish.

After Tuesday’s opening qualifying sessions saw the 8.9-mile road circuit linking the towns of Portstewart, Coleraine and Portrush hit by rain and strong winds, Thursday saw a lot better weather with dry, sunny conditions all round the course. The day got off to the worst possible start for Keith though when a bird flew out of a hedge and smashed into his windscreen during Superstock qualifying.

Forced to pit early on, he ended the session in 12th place whilst a faulty oil pressure switch left him down in 16th in the Superbike session. Twelfth was also the outcome for the Supersport class, which was the first race of the meeting later that evening.

Starting from the fourth row of the grid on the Rig Deluge® CBR600 Honda RR, a good start saw Keith up to 10th at the end of the first lap and by half race distance he’d moved up a place to ninth. Locked in a battle for sixth with fellow Honda riders John McGuinness, Conor Cummins and Dan Kneen, a best lap of 114.506mph enabled Keith to cross the line in a strong seventh place at the end of six hard fought laps.

The Superstock race completed the evening’s schedule but it was only a lap old when the race was stopped due to an incident and with the time approaching 9pm, time ran out for it to be re-started.

Keith Amor: “It’s fair to say it’s been a topsy turvy couple of days and it’s literally been one thing after another. We’ve just been hit by a series of freak things going wrong, things that no-one could have predicted and things that have never happened to me before! I haven’t really had the chance to get going properly yet and with all the little issues, my grid positions for all of the races have been compromised.”

“It’s frustrating when you work so hard and put so much effort into making everything all come together, only for little things to crop up but we know what we’ve got to do. On a positive note, I had a good run in Thursday evening’s 600cc race. I had a good battle with John, Conor and Dan and to take a solid seventh after being back in 12th on the grid was pleasing. BMW, Ohlins and Dunlop have all been working really hard to give us a package that works well so, hopefully, we’ve got all of our bad luck out of the way and we can have a good run of races on Saturday.”

Saturday promises to be a busy day for Keith with two races for both the Superbikes and Superstocks and another outing on the Supersport machine.

Picture by Stephen Davison – Pacemaker Press International