Reynolds column: Rizla win.

In the latest of his exclusive columns for Crash.net, former Rizla Suzuki racer John Reynolds talks about Shakey's win and tells us about taking his Mum for a flight.....

What a result! Everyone is massively happy with the win; Shakey has been knocking on the door all year really. We knew he could do it, we know the bike is good the team is good and everything else. There have been people knocking the team saying there is something missing, but there is absolutely nothing missing, all that has been missing is the results. Shane now has had a fantastic ride, he rode the wheels off the bike in the second race and I don't see any reason why we can't continue. Shakey and Rizla Suzuki are looking like they could win races weekend in and weekend out.

The race win is a far cry from our bikes being stolen, I've never heard of anything like that happening before. It is scary old thought. Hopefully that is all sorted and it won't happen again, it certainly put a cat amongst the pigeons for a while! But the team got on with the job in hand business as usual.

I was lucky enough to visit Goodwood where I took the old Rizla Suzuki out, the one I won the Championship on, and took it up the hill at Goodwood. It was a fantastic weekend full of motorsport fans, and it was good to go there on the bike and have a ride round. I was impressed coming to Knockhill, they have made a fantastic job of resurfacing and widening the circuit. It really is a world class place to come to and I really enjoyed riding the circuit with my pillion passengers. I enjoy taking them round, it is good fun, there is no pressure and it is just all about sharing the experience really. There are two or three things that we can do to make the job better and easier for the pillion, but we are working on that at the moment and it will be quite exciting.

No one has ever said that I scared them, well not to my face! The idea is not to terrify anybody it is purely just to give them an experience. I don't want to scare anybody but I want to give them the feeling of what it is like to go round a track reasonably quick on a bike. That is the deal it is not to scare but to make people enjoy.

My book is pretty well finished, it has gone away to be edited and towards to the end of September it should be out in the shops. Exciting times!

I'm getting lots of air time in, I'm flying week in and week out and as you well know I'm a massive aviation fan. I took my Mum up for the first time the other week. I walked into the house after taking Ben my little boy to school and she said "What you doing today?" I said "Flying, fancy coming along?" and she said "Yes". I nearly dropped to the floor as she has always said she wasn't that keen. Anyway we got air born to 2500 feet and it was quite turbulent, lumpy and bumpy, so I said to Mum "I'll take us up to 3500 feet." It smoothed out and was really quite peaceful up there. So I told my Mum I was going to make a right turn, I put the aircraft into not a massive steep turn but it was quite a steep turn and she panicked and grabbed hold of the sticks! The steering column and everything, she pushed it forward - it all went a bit pear shaped for a bit. I've spoken to Mother now and said "If you get scared whatever you do, do not grab hold of the joy stick because that will get us in trouble." It just made me smile that the first thing Mum grabbed was the thing that controls the aircraft. Typical mother!

I'm not going to make any predictions for Oulton as you can never predict what is going to happen as racing is so volatile. All I know is that the Rizla Suzuki is working really well, Shakey is riding the bike well, all things being equal we will be up there and looking like we can get on the podium. We've been there before where everything looks good until you get to the race and it all turns to worms, but that is racing and that is what you have to be prepared for. The deal is we are a strong team; we take the good with the bad as we have for the last year and a half. We will just keep plugging on and the results will come if we work hard enough.

Catch you later.

JR