Courtesy of Willis Marshal
Michael Pearson endured a mixed bag at a cold and windy Cookstown 100 on Saturday, with the former Irish Superbike Champion having to deal with everything from a practice spill to a race win.
Also for good measure, Pearson took a DNF in the first Superbike Race when the 36SC/Richard Rawson Honda encountered a false neutral leaving Pearson stranded at the side of the road after just one lap
.
A practice spill in Fridays Supersport 600 timed session meant that Pearson was unable to clock a starting time for Saturdays Group "A" race and was forced to start at the back of Group B, in which the D&GW/Carryduff Forklift Yamaha rider stormed to a 13 second race win on corrected time.
Pearson then followed that up with a super fourth place finish in the Cookstown 100 Superbike race when he just narrowly missed out on a podium place after a good clean battle with Adrian Archibald.
Michael Pearson: "The whole weekend was a mixed bag really with just about everything happening.
It all started with a first lap practice crash in the timed 600 session after I hit some debris on the road which had been left from a previous incident at that corner. I was fuming that I could not get back to the start/finish to get the bike looked at and try for a lap time, but the marshal's where having none of it. I got permission to start at the back of the B Race which I managed to win quite comfortably.
In the first Superbike race, the Honda Fireblade kept hitting a false neutral and that was it, out of the race. We had a look at it before the Cookstown 100 race and found a wee kink in the selector rode which when fixed did the trick.
I really enjoyed the Cookstown 100 race and was well pleased with fourth place behind Archibald and in front of Guy Martin.
My own Superstock Honda is down on power and I was just being eaten up by Adrian Archibald on the long straight past the start/finish, so we will have to make a few alterations before this weekends Tandragee 100, a race which I always like competing in".
