On only his second visit to the Macau GP Louth ace Peter Hickman has won the 49th annual race with a six second advantage over Martin Jessopp with Michael Rutter finishing in third place.

Throughout free practice and the first qualifying session Hicky took his time to refresh his memory of the track layout before scorching his way around the 3.8 mile public road circuit to secure third place for the start of Saturday’s race. He was second in morning warm up and began his race from a front row grid position.

As the lights went out he slotted into second place behind Martin Jessopp and the pair immediately pulled clear of the pursuing pack.

Jessopp had a good lead but as the race progressed Hicky began to make inroads towards him and by half race distance on lap six he was right with him. He followed him for a couple of laps before making his move to take the lead.

With a clear track in front of him Hicky gradually increased his lead and crossed the finish line at the end of the 12 laps a full six seconds ahead of Jessopp to give a fairy tale win to the team at the end of a very successful year.

Hicky said:

“It feels absolutely fantastic. This is only the second time I have been to Macau. I’ve not been doing the road racing scene for very long, but my British Superbike championships have been pretty strong the last couple of years. It’s fantastic to be able to transfer between the two.

“We all knew from the qualifying and practices that Martin [Jessopp] was really strong, and the pace that he had compared to everyone else seemed too much, to be quite honest. I was on the Dunlop tyres and Jessopp and Rutter were on different, so we knew that we were going to be strong for the second half of the race. I figured that Martin was going to pull away in the first five or six laps and then hopefully we’d come back to him. Martin put in such a fast lap. I thought I just need to be clean, don’t make any mistakes and just be as fast as I can. As soon as I had a chance, I was close enough at Lisboa and I passed him straight away. Fortunately the plan worked.

“I would like to thank my team as all their hard work has paid off. Briggs Equipment UK for their support and the RAF Reserves team for putting such a fantastic bike under me. Also my thanks to Lee Hardy who has believed in me this past 18 months, I now move on to my new team for next season but its great that I have given Lee a win to end my time with him and the team.”

Hicky travels directly to Spain to test with the JG Speedfit Kawasaki team before returning home to Louth for the Christmas festivities. He will take in more winter testing during the coming months prior to making his debut for JG Speedfit Kawasaki in the first round of the 2016 British Superbike championship at Silverstone on April 10.






Courtesy of
Helen Pask
Press Officer
Peter Hickman Racing
Pic credit CGPM