Gowland with Moto2 FTR at NEC Show

British star Graeme Gowland and the FTR Moto M209 he took to second place in the final Spanish championship round at Valencia recently, will be at the NEC Show.

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The M209 – complete with a Joe Darcey Honda Team 600cc supersport specification motor – is fresh from second place in the final round of the Spanish Championship at Valencia on Sunday and is part of the display offered by Dunlop Tyres, the single tyre supplier to the new Moto2 World Championship from 2010.

FTR Moto director Steve Bones said: “We’ve had exceptional interest when we first presented the machine in London six weeks ago then when we arrived at Catalunya for the Spanish round.

“That interest and excitement was repeated at the Valencia MotoGP round and I now hope the visitors to the NEC Motorcycle show will also be pleased with what they see.”

Gowland, fourth in his debut at Jerez, once more proved the potential of the FTR machine in the final Valencia round as he improved his lap time aboard the M209 throughout the weekend and set his fastest lap of the weekend with six laps to go in the 19-lap race to finish second.

“Every time I got on the machine we made huge steps forward,” said Gowland, who rode under the Joe Darcey Team banner in the two Spanish races.

“We know exactly which areas of the machine need to be addressed.

“We made some changes to the set-up in the warm-up on Sunday morning at Valencia which were better again and we had a good race setting so the options for improvement keep coming, the potential is clear.

“Considering the machine only ran for the first time six weeks ago and some of the other Moto2 machines have been running since January I think the future for the FTR machine is really exciting.”

Gowland finished 12th overall in the Extreme class race at Valencia with the Moto2 race winner, Daniel Rivas, finishing 11th.

Ten Moto2 machines contested the final round and Gowland was catching eventual class winner Rivas by 0.6s a lap in the closing stages.

“We were very close now to beating the best Moto2 laps around Valencia and with the many improvements FTR has planned for the M210 machine everything looks really, really positive for the weeks ahead with the prototype,” added Gowland.