Seeley relies on spare bike to wrap up title

Alastair Seeley wrapped up the National Superstock title with his ninth win in nine races so far this year.

Closest rival in the points Steve Brogan crashed after tagging the rear end of Adam Jenkinson’s Honda going in to the Hairpin and Seeley’s win on the Relentless by TAS Suzuki means he can’t be caught with three races left.

Seeley said: It’s mega to win the title this early. I didn’t think I could wrap it up here. I saw Steve was out and just stuck to my game plan.”

Seeley’s title even took team boss Philip Neil by surprise. He said: “No special tee-shirts, no champers. I’m a bit superstitious about things like that but I thought I’d secretly get something together in case he’d wrap it up at Croft!”

Seeley survived a huge crash in practice on Saturday that wrote off his regular race bike.

The Relentless by TAS Suzki team rushed a spare superstock bike from their Moneymore base in Northern Ireland after Seeley wrote off his race bike in a crash at the Gooseneck on Saturday.

Luckily the team had one spare bike in the truck, which Seeley used that afternoon but he switched to the fresh bike, Cameron Donald’s superstocker to qualify on pole – his fifth of the year.

The bike had left Ireland at 5.00pm on Saturday and arrived at the Lincolnshire circuit at 1.30am Sunday morning.

The question now is when will Seeley be given the chance on a superbike?

Neil said: “We’ll look at it but three superbikes in one meeting is a difficult task.]

“We’ve got to be careful it doesn’t overshadow anything we’re doing with Atsu and Ian. But we’ll definitely be testing with him, Put it that way!”

David Wood also wrapped up the KTM RC8 Super Cup title at Cadwell after his closest rival Pauli Pekkanen was involved in as four-rider crash at Park on the first lap.