Honda “hard work”, not machinery the key to Ryan Vickers’ Thruxton BSB wins
Ryan Vickers says “hard work”, not machinery, was the advantage Honda gave him to win at the Thruxton BSB.
Two race wins at the Thruxton BSB did not indicate a machinery advantage for Ryan Vickers at the Hampshire track, he says.
Yamaha had entered the Thruxton weekend unbeaten there in five seasons, but in 2026 it was Ducati and Honda that took the wins with Kyle Ryde and Vickers, respectively.
But the Yamaha is still the strongest bike at Thruxton, Vickers believes, and so winning there – especially after going the first six rounds of 2026 without finishing on the podium – makes the success last weekend particularly satisfying.
“For sure,” said Ryan Vickers when asked after Race 3 by Crash.net whether the Thruxton wins ranked among his most satisfying in BSB.
“When I jumped on the Yamaha, I knew it was a championship-winning bike. You come to Thruxton and, basically, if you don’t win here on the Yamaha then you’re not going to win – it’s just a given.
“It still probably is the best bike here, you’ve just got to ride it correctly.
“We’re not on the strongest package. They’ve [Honda Racing UK] given me a great bike, but I know what the bikes are like around me.
“We’ve won that one as a team through all the hard work, and just happy to be able to do that.”
The team effort for the Thruxton wins started before the weekend. Vickers told Crash.net at Oulton Park that he wanted to “enlighten” the Honda team on some of the things he’d done at OMG Yamaha in the past to try to maximise the performance at Thruxton.
After the two wins in Hampshire, Vickers said he’d demanded the “fastest engine” Honda had available.
“I pushed the guys at the workshop, stuff they hadn’t done before,” he said.
“Made them put the fastest engine they could give me, few other things with spin and things like that.
“We did some quite clever stuff on the electronics that we learnt on the Yamaha. I pushed the guys to find a way to do that and they did, and it gave me exactly what I needed and that really helped me in the race.
“They’ve listened to me, they’ve trusted me, and by doing that I’ve been able to deliver the goods.”
Line choice: A worthwhile compromise
Vickers had mentioned on the grid before Race 2, when speaking to James Whitham for the TNT Sports broadcast, that he was able to use less track on corner exits than the other riders and therefore save more rear tyre.
In Race 3, he was using such a noticeably little amount of track on the exit of the first turn that at one point he was passed between turns one and two by Kyle Ryde – who, in fairness, made multiple passes at that turn on Sunday.
This, though, was of little concern to Vickers, who knew that by doing that Ryde would be using more grip in his rear tyre.
“To be honest, as long as I’m on the correct line, I’m not bothered if anyone else passes me because the advantage of running tight lines is that anybody that passes you has to go around the outside; therefore they’ve got more lean angle and they’re using more power, and they use more tyre,” Vickers explained.
“It might only be a small thing every time, or it might only be a little bit more spin, but over 20 laps it makes a huge difference to the tyre.
“I was really happy with that, I just stuck to my guns, kept doing what I was doing, and it was a little bit slower at the start of the race but as the race came on I just gained and gained and gained, and we came into where we were strong.
“So, really happy that I did that.
“We all had no front tyre at the end, was just completely losing the front everywhere. But we made it happen, timed it perfect out of Church, got a real good slipstream, and managed to get the double on Sunday.”
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
