Dan Kneen showed impressive form at Oliver’s Mount this weekend stepping onto the podium in both the David Jefferies Junior and Steve Henshaw Gold Cup races.

Despite it only being the Manx man’s second visit to the tight and twisty seaside circuit he put his YZF-R1M Yamaha on the front row for the Senior races behind track specialist and defending Gold Cup champion Dean Harrison. In Saturday’s encounter Harrison pulled away at the front leaving Kneen, Ivan Linton and John McGuinness to contest second place. Unfortunately, on the penultimate lap a brake issue forced Kneen to retire but by that stage the twenty-nine-year-old had improved on his qualifying time by almost a full second to post a lap speed of 81.788mph, second only to eventual race winner Harrison.

There were no such issues in the feature race of the weekend as Kneen came home a safe third in the Steve Henshaw Gold Cup race behind Harrison and Linton. Held on Sunday afternoon in front of a huge crowd the Yamaha UK man got through to third place on lap four but couldn’t do anything about Linton in second place so settled for his seventeenth podium of the year for Tim Martin’s outfit.

In the David Jefferies Junior class the man from Braddan on the Isle of Man qualified in fifth place before putting in a sterling performance to clinch the runners up spot behind Ivan Linton. After moving into second on lap five of the eight Kneen held off the attentions of Daley Mathison by putting in his fastest lap of the race on the last lap, just half a second splitting the pair at the flag.

Team Principal – Tim Martin

“To be fair to Dan he rode well this weekend, he has very limited experience at Scarborough so to get two podiums is no mean feat. We had our fair share of misfortune too to be fair with the brake issue on Saturday and getting caught up in another crash in the second supersport race but all in all a decent weekend. The team worked well and the bikes ran superbly, we’ve done eight race meetings with Dan this year and he has stood on the podium at all bar one which is not to be overlooked. Big thank you to all the guys for another good weekend’s work.”

Rider – Dan Kneen

“I would have liked to have done a little better really but we have to be happy with podiums on my second time there. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed out in one of the races which was valuable track time I could have done with but the guys in front of me are there all the time so I was always going to be playing catch up. I couldn’t get past Daley in the big race, the track is really tight so it was hard to make a clean move. By the time I eventually did Ivan was too far up the road to do anything about second place but third wasn’t a bad result. I’d just like to say a massive thank you to all the guys in the team for all of their hard work as always.”