Dan Kneen had his first competitive outing since early May this week as he made a welcome return from injury at the Southern 100 road races.

The Manx flyer was forced to sit out the North West 200 and Isle of Man TT races but quickly shook off the cobwebs to qualify both his Yamaha UK machines on the front two rows. Tuesday evening saw the first outing for the YZF-R1M superbike in the Corlett’s Trophies race and it was Kneen and Linton who contested second spot with Dunlop away at the front. A lap of 111.077mph by Kneen on lap four closed the gap to second place but in the end it was a comfortable third place and a welcome return to the rostrum for both Kneen and Mar-Train.

Conditions were extremely tricky around the 4.25 Billown circuit on Wednesday evening with tyre choice proving critical. In the Senior race an intermediate front and slick rear Metzeler combination helped twenty-nine-year old Kneen to a superb second place behind the in form Dunlop. The Mar-Train man had to put in his fastest lap of the race on the last lap to hold off the attentions of Ivan Linton and equal his best ever result at the Southern 100.

The feature race of the meeting, the Solo Championship race, turned out to be yet another battle between Kneen and Linton for podium positions. The pair duelled throughout but despite setting a lap of 112.103mph, his fastest of the week, on the final lap Kneen had to settle for fourth position, just losing out on a third place by four thousandths of a second.

A wrong tyre choice forced Kneen to retire from the first supersport race as conditions worsened and a run on at one of the junctions ended the second race whilst in contention with the leaders


Team Principal – Tim Martin

“It is nice to get back to racing after the long lay-off, Dan isn’t fully fit yet and obviously quite rusty compared to the TT boys who have had endless miles under their belts in the past two months. To come away with a second, third and fourth in the superbike races is therefore no mean feat so we have to be very happy with that. Dan rode well all week and now he has that comeback meeting under his belt we will hopefully be able to challenge for wins at Armoy. Ironically our best chances should have come in the supersport races so not completing those races was disappointing, the main thing though is we are back out and competitive again so well done to Dan and the whole team for a positive week.”

Rider – Dan Kneen

“On one hand I’m a bit frustrated as I know I can ride a lot better than I did this week but on the other I’m just getting over a nasty injury and haven’t ridden a bike in two months so to come away with a couple of podiums and lap only a second off my best time is pretty good really. The main issue was bike fitness as the boys are so sharp after the TT compared to me, I really wanted a podium in the main race but I was suffering a bit at the end and just couldn’t get the drive to pass Ivan to the line. The bikes were excellent though, the R1 is as competitive as anything so when I’m fit we should be in the mix. I’m looking forward to Armoy now and building up further to the Ulster GP next month.”