CASTLEDAWSON Cyclone Nico MaWhinney caused a storm at the northern round of the Mondello Masters at Bishopscourt on Saturday when the former Irish Superbike Champion took a brace of Superbike wins in the most extraordinary conditions ever seen at the county Down venue.
Hail and rain stormed swept the Downpatrick circuit resulting in a series of red flag incidents that saw current Irish Superbike Champion Ryan Rainey from Antrim sustaining a double collarbone fracture along with wrist and ankle injuries which will curtail Rainey's season for a considerable number of weeks. In race one, it took three restarts before MaWhinney was declared the winner after Dublin's Cody Nally and Antrim's Gerard Kingham crashed out in the difficult and changing conditions.
MaWhinney again came out tops in race two which like the first Superbike race was stopped on no less than two occasions to deal with incidents. "This has to be the maddest race I have ever been involved in" said MaWhinney. "I just rode steady in the races and was very cautious in the conditions, but I hope those, especially Ryan Rainey's injuries are not to bad and a speedy recovery to him".
Meanwhile, the road racing action returns this weekend with the Around A Pound Tandragee 100 road races in county Armagh. The men to beat this weekend will again be the Burrows Engineering Team of new kid on the block Malachi Mitchell- Thomas from Bristol and Dubliner Derek Sheils who both took the Mid Antrim 150 by storm with no less than four wins between them. They will be joined by Dungannons Ryan Farquhar on his new look BMW Superstock machine with Farquhar very much the man to take away the spoils from Team Burrows.
Other notable entries include William Dunlop on the CD Racing machines, Skerries man Michael Sweeney, Ballymoneys Paul Robinson, Saintfields Davy Morgan, and Fermanaghs Paul Gartland. A little bit of International flavour returns to the Tandragee with Italian rider Dario Cecconi returning to the Armagh venue along with Czech Republic riders Michal Dukuopil and Veronika Hankoyova.
Practice takes place on Friday evening with race day Saturday seeing roads close at 10am around the circuit with a full race programme for Moto3 - Lightweight - Supersport 600 - Superbikes and Classic machines.
