Mediaboss Marketing

by Philip Wain

With two days and three races held so far at the Isle of Man TT races, James Hillier and the Bournemouth Kawasaki Pr1mo Racing team have been excelling and with three top seven finishes, the 27-year old has posted his best ever TT results, including a brilliant fifth in Monday's Supersport TT. After being on the leaderboard in all his classes during practice week, particularly the Lightweight where he was second quickest, race week got underway for James on Saturday with the 6-lap Superbike TT. Fifth through Glen Helen, the first timing point, James completed the opening lap in sixth place with a lap of 127.811mph and although he got shuffled back to seventh a lap later by William Dunlop, he was still comfortably ahead of eighth placed rider Ian Hutchinson. Consistently lapping in excess of 126mph, James was able to consolidate his position for the remainder of the race to claim a strong seventh. The week got even better on Monday with his best ever TT result, fifth in the first Supersport TT race and again the first Kawasaki rider home. Despite not getting many laps on the bike during practice week, a strong opening lap of 121.829mph placed James in ninth place. Although he dropped back to 12th on lap two, he was still only two seconds off ninth such was the closeness of the race and combined with Michael Dunlop retiring, Daniel Kneen crashing (fortunately without serious injury), and his own strong lap he moved up to seventh. The gap he now held over Dan Stewart, Roy Richardson and Ian Lougher was up to eleven seconds and with the final lap seeing Ryan Farquhar and Gary Johnson both retire, James took a brilliant fifth at the chequered flag. Later that same evening, there was the 4-lap Superstock race and a fantastic start saw James lie in second place at Glen Helen, nine miles into the lap, just half a second behind John McGuinness. At the end of the lap James had slipped back to sixth but it was again very close with just a handful of seconds covering the riders in third to eighth. For the remainder of the race, James enjoyed a good dice on the roads with Michael Rutter and Dan Stewart and the battle meant that James closed in on Bruce Anstey and Guy Martin who were battling for fourth. At the end of over 150 miles, James finished in a very strong sixth place, just four seconds behind Martin and five behind Anstey. Speaking on Tuesday, team owner Pete Extance said; "What can I say, the week's going really, really well and after being strong throughout practice week, James has carried that good form into race week. A solid seventh got the races underway in fine style and even though the Supersport race is our weakest class, it's ended up giving James and the team our best result so far. Due to only having one engine left, James didn't get many laps on it during practice and although there were a few retirements in the race, the name of the game is to get to the finish and that's what James did. He was always in the top ten and the lap times were good so we were delighted with the result and also being the first Kawasaki home." "It set us up for the evening's Superstock race and James set off at a fantastic pace, running in second at Glen Helen. The gaps between the top half dozen riders was always close and the second half of the race saw James comfortably in the top six and right on the tail of Guy Martin and Bruce Anstey. He was able to consolidate his position and had a great dice on the roads with Michael and Dan and the end result was another good sixth place. Even more pleasing was the fact that he was just five seconds off fourth place and multiple race winner Bruce Anstey. That made it three top seven finishes out of three starts and we're all now really looking forward to the rest of the week, especially the Lightweight TT race on Friday where James has a really good chance of a dream debut victory." The next race is Wednesday's second 4-lap Supersport race with Friday seeing the 3-lap Lightweight and 6-lap Senior races. Picture by Paul Woodlock.

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Hillier enjoying superb week on the Island