The only Brit in the Supersport class was Craig Jones, the 22-year-old who is backed by Gary Ekerold’s Revè Ekerold Honda Racing team. Ekerold is a South African - the son of the 1980 350cc world champion Jon Ekerold - and has a pretty good fix on why Britain doesn’t produce a stream of world class riders.
"BSB [the British Superbike Championship] is just too good," he said at
Silverstone. "It’s simply too strong. It’s too easy for British riders to race in England.
"When an Australian rider comes to Europe he’s travelled 10,000 miles and there’s nothing for him to go back to. The same applies to a South African like me: I’ve come here to be world champion and I’m going to make sure that that happens."
In Ekerold’s case, he means a world champion as a team owner. Last year he won the British Supersport title with Cal Crutchlow as his rider, and used that as a springboard to launch into World Supersport. But problems arose.
"It isn’t just the riders, it’s the corporates, too," Ekerold said. "Why would British companies get into world championship racing when they can get everything they need from the British series? I lost Nokia, Northpoint [a powder coating company] and Jewson [builders’ merchants] as sponsors when I moved to World Supersport.
"We had one of the best funded teams in Britain. Now we’re struggling for funding, and it’s showing in our results."
Businessman and racing fanatic Ben Atkins, who used to back British Superbike champion John Reynolds, is now financing the team, which explains his trademark Revè team name on the bikes. Honda - who actively try and develop young British riders - are also providing support.
But it’s turning into a frustrating season for Ekerold. After Jones finished fourth in the World Supersport race at
Donington in April the squad was hoping for similar success at Silverstone. Indeed, Jones climbed from 13th place on the grid to third place by lap four. But on lap seven he crashed in the rain, and he now holds 15th place in the championship.
"Rain like this is a lottery - there was carnage in every class today," Ekerold said.
Meanwhile his vision of becoming a world championship team owner remains undimmed. "We’ll get there," he said in his race truck as his mechanics packed away his virgin-white CBR600s, largely unadorned by sponsors’ logos. "Something always crops up. There’s a certain amount of fate involved in this. It takes a lot of positive thinking to win anything in life."
