Luck of the Irish
LUCK OF THE IRISH
AS THE WORLD GETS more pansy-assed and governments try harder to make a dangerous world seem safer with ever more laws and regulations, a few brave (crazy?) folks simply scoff at this political correct ness, not to mention the laws of physics. Note the above photo.
To have a Yamaha YZF-R6 that high off the ground, that far from the crest in the road is not an issue in itself. But to have the rear wheel a good 2 feet out of line with its broth er is downright negligent. The man on board is 35-
year-old Irishman John Burrows. Mr. Burrows is one of the top "real road" racers in Ireland. He runs an engineer ing company and does this for fun and, if he's lucky, a few hundred euros in prize money.
Real-road racing isn't like anything you've ever seen before. The tracks are rural public lanes, shut for the day. They're pathologically bumpy and half as wide as an Isle of Man street and so narrow in
some sections that two cars can't pass each other. The TT is faster for longer, but Irish road racers still have modern 1000cc Superbikes pinned in sixth gear at times. And these men are close to fearless.
"I'd crashed on the morning this photo was taken," Burrows explains of his day at the Bush Road Races in Northern Ireland. "I'd qualified on pole in the Superbike class but had a bad start, and I was lying third when I caught my knee on an embankment and crashed hard. I pulled the mus cles off my breastbone and was bleeding into my lungs. Not a lot, but when I coughed there was blood."
Still, no reason not to race his 600...
"Later that day I was third in the 600 race, with a 14-sec ond lead over fourth. I knew I wasn't fit to challenge for the win so I settled in at a leisure ly pace. I'd always gone through this section near enough flat-out, but this time I rolled the throttle into the start of the jump, it cornpressed the suspension and fired the bike up."
You can see the result. But Burrows rode it out. If he hadn't, you would never have seen this photo.
"It was such a fast sec tion of the circuit, if I had of gone down there it would have been fairly fatal," he says. "It made me realize the dangers of road racing. There was a lot of furniture around therewalls, trees and an old house. I was lucky."
Lucky, but still back at another Irish road race two weeks later for more of the same. -Gary Inman
