BBC Sport NI is gearing up for our coverage of this year’s North West 200 International road races. 2011 is the second year of our five year contract which sees the event broadcast across the BBC until 2014.

Celebrating its 82nd anniversary this year, the NW200 has attracted motorsport fans from all over the world with upwards of 100,000 people witnessing the thrills of road racing on the nine miles of public roads.

This year BBC Sport NI will continue to provide fans with enhanced coverage throughout the week-long festival across BBC TV, radio and online. As well as the live and highlights action, there will be reports and special features from behind-the-scenes including interviews and profiles of the riders, the fans and the people who make it one of the sport’s biggest attractions.

A new feature for this year is that the North West online coverage will be provided via the BBC Sport NI homepage, rather than via a dedicated and separate NW 200 site.

Shane Glynn, Editor BBC Sport NI said:

“The dedicated North West 200 site worked very well, providing our audience with fantastic added value content, as well as hosting the live practice and race day action. This site will remain to host the vast wealth of archive material we’ve gathered. But the special features, latest news and all the live action will from this year be coming direct from our BBC Sport NI web page, which should make the North West coverage feel more an integrated part of our wider sport portfolio, rather than a separate event. On average during 2011, the BBC Sport Northern Ireland website attracted over 193,000 UK unique users per week. When we secured the rights to the North West 200, we pledged to provide fans with the most innovative, creative and in depth coverage of the races and the week leading up to them, and we aim to continue to build on the success of our coverage thus far.”

Coverage of the NW 200 festival on TV will include a preview programme and two special highlights programmes presented by Stephen Watson and Phillip McAllen featuring all the action from the racing and behind the scenes features on the top teams and riders and coverage from 24 trackside cameras, aerial camera and on-bike cameras.

BBC Radio Ulster’s Summer Club will come live from the event on race day, with coverage of all the races. There will also be a Friday night preview programme on Radio Ulster medium wave.

Both practice sessions will be live online, and all the races on the Saturday will also be available live online, while two of them will be available live via the red button service for digital viewers.

Technical Director Mervyn Whyte MBE said,

“We‘ve had a fantastic partnership with BBC NI over many years and each year the whole production and presentation team add new and creative dimensions to BBC’s range of NW200 programmes. The end result is high calibre and hugely exciting television, radio and online coverage which reaches millions of people worldwide. Everyone involved in the North West 200 would like to thank all the team at BBC for their hard work and professionalism.”

BBC Sport Northern Ireland’s Ceefax service will also provide the latest news and information during the NW 200 festival week.