Dafabet Devitt Racing made their annual trip to the Macau Grand Prix this week and it proved to be a more than successful trip to the Far East venue with debutantes Paul Jordan and Dominic Herbertson impressing with 14th and 20th place respectively in Saturday’s race.

Conditions throughout the week were good and although free practice was a bit of a stop-start affair due to two crashes, the pairing acquitted themselves well as they got to grips with the Armco-lined circuit on their Kawasaki ZX-10R’s, Paul completing Thursday’s free practice session in 18th and Dominic, who was nursing a hand injury, in 25th.

First qualifying later that afternoon saw them reduce their lap times by four and seven seconds respectively and further improvements were made in Friday morning’s second and final qualifying session. Magherafelt’s Jordan shaved a further 3.5s off his lap time with a new personal best of 2m31.195s placing him 17th on the grid whilst Herbertson bettered his previous day’s best by five seconds to line up in 23rd place.

With good conditions for Saturday afternoon’s race, both riders made clean starts and at the completion of the opening lap, Paul slotted into 15th place with Dominic in 24th. A lap later, Paul moved ahead of both Erno Kostamo and Didier Grams to take 13th whilst Hexham’s Herbertson was also on the move, crossing the line in 22nd.

Paul found himself locked in battle with Michael Sweeney and the duo would circulate at high speed for the remainder of the race with Ben Wylie and Phil Crowe not too further back in 15th and 16th respectively. Dominic, meanwhile, moved into the top twenty for the first time just after half race distance.

Any hopes of climbing further up the leaderboard ended just after they started their tenth of twelve laps as Wylie and Crowe crashed out at Fisherman’s Bend, fortunately without serious injury. It brought the red flags out though and the result was declared at the end of eight laps which placed Paul in 14th and Dominic in 20th, extremely creditable perfomances on their first appearance around the challenging 3.8-mile circuit.

Paul Jordan:

“For my first time at Macau, I have to be pleased with the result and there’s no words to sum the circuit up other than it’s insane! I just kept chipping away during practice especially through the fast stuff as a lot of the corners are blind so it’s hard to know how fast to go through them. I went into second qualifying with the same approach and I didn’t want to do anything silly so I was happy with my qualifying position as I did all the lap times on my own.”

“I didn’t get a bad start to the race but the first lap was a bit hairy and I got boxed in a bit which opened up the gap to the group in front of me. I ended up having a bit of a tussle with Michael Sweeney and a few other lads but I really enjoyed the race. The bike and the team worked really, really well and I’m really happy with the result so am looking forward to coming back next year.”

Dominic Herbertson:

“Aside from everything I’ve achieved, I can’t thank the team enough this week. I had a massive highside at the Sunflower Trophy meeting last month so was struggling with a nasty hand injury which was making it hard to turn the bike but the circuit is great.so, personally, I was over the moon with what I achieved. It’s obviously a shame the race got shortened but rider safety always comes first and thankfully everyone was ok. The whole experience has been mega and I’ve loved every minute of it so I can’t thank the team enough.” 

Roy Constable, Team Owner:

“The boys did really well and attacked the circuit in the way it needs to be attacked. They chipped away each session and steadily got quicker and Paul’s lap times were very impressive for a newcomer. Dom was carrying a hand injury and althought it had physically healed, he was still in immense pain and with the circuit being so physically demanding and with constant changes in direction, he was really up against it.”

“In the race itself, they both did exceptionally well. It’s very easy to come out here and get carried away but they settled themselves in and were steady away throughout. It’s been great to have Dafabet create the one-off Celtic-themed bike and with both lads scoring good results, it’s good to end our season on a high. A massive thank you to Dafabet, Devitt and all our other sponsors that help us go racing and do what we love.”