Thunderbikes. Some of the other bikes.

One of the Alto Perfomance teams' guys, Jules, takes pictures for fun and to supply the team no doubt. He is always willing to run off a copy for me at the end of a meeting. I would like to take the time to show off some of his handy work and at the same time show some of the other bikes racing in Thunderbikes. Jules takes some great shots and Cadwell is one of the most picturesque places to be shooting. Unfortunately, I don't have the software to cut the shots down to size and I don't suppose the skill either, so forgive me Jules, if this doesn't do your shots justice. Personally, I still think they're brilliant.

In no particular order...

Joe Duggan, new to the series this year and doing well on his Ducati 748


Rob Chapman on his gorgeous NSR250.

Regular John Hall. If you think you're too old, come at see John wheelie over the mountain at the young age of 61!

Gary Budgen. Missed the championship by 1 point last season.

My co.racer Phil Smith. This is engine number 3 this season. Spent the 2 previous seasons on a Laverda 750 formula.


Paul Martin. Suzuki SV 650. A popular bike for Thunderbikes. Altamura run 2 of these, The other ridden by Craig Ashall.

Mike Parry fields another Ducati 748. A nice looking example.

Simon Peyto, Championship leader sat in Hospital while Lee Hodge plays caretaker aboard The Diablo Suzuki SV 650. A superbly prepared and set up machine.

Peter Whitelegg aboard his Alto prepared Laverda 750 formula. Pete raced for Alto for a while before Read took over last season. Hope to see this out again.

Phil Read JnR aboard the Alto Vyrus. No forks can win! This is a feast for any engineers eyes. What an amazing piece of kit. Some say it's ugly, some say it's lovely.Either way, it's fast and can win.

Dan Wright on a Honda CBR 600 "steelie", very similar to Gary Budgens' and giving Gary a hard time.

Young Danny Buchan.Age just 15 years. Remember that name, you may well hear it a lot in the future. Kawasaki ZXR400. He was excluded from the results at Cadwell because the frame was deemed illegal. Too long a story to go into, but he was flying. He took the lap record. Excluded or not, nobody could take away from him, his outright pace. The championship would look different if he was a regular. What a talent!

Andy Burbridge on another Ducati. Andy is an old hand at racing but is out at the moment with a broken collarbone. He'll be back for sure! Not sure who took this picture.

The Inzane Ducati. Ridden by MotorCycle News reporter Michael Neeves. This bike runs on Bio Ethanol. Who says racing can't be green!

Ok so this picture was taken by me back in June but I couldn't leave out the Kawasaki ZXR 750s of Colin Walkey (blue machine) and Rob Bean. These two were at it hammer and tongs all race until colin fell at the mountain, putting him out of racing for a few meetings. That was scary, don't do it again Colin. Rob is also out at the moment with a busted motor. He'll be back I am sure.

This TDR 250 runs in the Yamaha Past Masters series along with RD250LCs,RD350LCs, TZR250s and RD350 YPVS machines. 2 strokes are eligable for thunderbikes and I am surprised we don't see any in our series. I like this bike a lot. It's really tidy and I had to
stick it on this page.

This is a Racing line image from Brands early in the season. Kev Furnish on his Suzuki GSXR 750. Gary Skellet also runs a GSXR 750 in Sheene colours. He's not had much luck with it though. It keeps breaking.

Here's a couple of moody shots from Jules, Both of Phil Read. They capture some of what racing is about....




There are a lot more machines racing in Thunderbikes.Last season there were somewhere around 80+ different bikes and riders entered in the series.This year we are up to around 50 or more. Some are regular entries, others are only occasional. I don't have images of quite a few of them and what I do have are rubbish. If you are interested to have a look at more stuff, Racing line Photography have some great shots of just about everybody that races with the club on their website archive. The link is on the right of this page.

Enjoy!