Sunoco 125GP News: Luke Hedgers Truxton debut

15 year old Luke Hedger had a tough debut at the UK’s fastest circuit Thruxton last weekend. Making his debut at the fast and bumpy track rookie rider Luke was looking like securing another front row start during final qualifying but an off track excursion at the fast Village corner saw Luke grass tracking at over 100 mph. He managed to slow down before crashing out at 50 mph but despite missing the remaining half of the session he only dropped two places to start on the second row in 6th place.

All the practice and qualifying was held in the dry but by our Monday race time heavy rain was falling. With the schedule running late due to delays with the Superbikes there was no time to give the British 125 Championship riders there normal eight minute wet weather practice so Luke had to line up on the grid with brand new unscrubbed tyres and no experience at all in the rain on his Banks Racing Honda RS125. Luke had no choice but to make a sensible decision to take things easy for the first few laps and see how things went. Luke settled into a safe 12th place but by three quarters race distance was going much faster to finish the race in 10th place and 6th place in the Academy Cup class. This was enough for Luke to take over the lead in the cup class and strengthen his 2nd position in the main championship. The team were very proud of Luke’s approach to a very tricky situation and he did himself and the team proud.

This was another great performance from Luke who unlike his other championship contenders is a “rookie” in his

first year in the championship. Luke has another new circuit to learn at the next round at Knockhill and rain or shine we are confident Luke will put on a good show and bring home some major points in his and the teams quest to finish as high as possible in the two combined championships.

The team are happy at the moment with both the engine performance and Luke’s riding but one area we are lacking is front suspension. Most of the front runners are using Ohlins kit front forks but we only have modified standard forks and we are now actively looking at ways to find a budget to give Luke equal machinery by adding Ohlins forks to our bike. If anyone would like to help the team in any way please call Pete on 07762 428210 or email pete@banksracing125.com or visit the website www.banksracing125.com where you can leave a donation via PayPal. Next meeting is at Knockhill on June 17th to 19th. Races are usually shown live on Eurosport 2 and repeated on the following Thursday evening.