[2] Move to road racing
Half way through my season of 2005 we decided to start road racing, but that wasn’t to happen without help from our friends. A customer of my Dads helped us tremendously to get me started and Dad and I appreciate this so much as I would not have been able to start racing without his help, his name is Jerry Shepherd.
Jerry got me started by buying my two bikes for the aprilia superteens championship and also another two for his son as he was going to start as it had interested him after my first race meeting on the bikes. Unfortunately this did not plan out and although Jerry bought the bikes for his son, Alex had lost interest, so Jerry said we could use the bikes for spare parts.
Also we had a lot of great help from other people as well including Keith Townsend who earlier on use to race himself and to me he was one of the greats at the Isle of Man and won the 600 junior race in the year 2000. Later on when Keith had retired from racing he owned a shop called D.C. Butler Motorcycles and very gratefully helped us out by supplying me top of the range soumy helmets and also other things that a racer needs. Dad and I much appreciate Keith’s help and he has also paid for other expenses over the past season and a half in my career.
I would also like to say a massive thank you to anyone else whose name I haven’t mentioned that have helped me in any way since I started road racing.
