NCTRacing are pleased to announce their first signing for 2008.
Emerging young talent Davy Haire from Lisburn, NI, has signed to ride for the team competing in the new Superstock 600 championship.
Davy had an amazing year competing in the Virgin Mobile Cup in 2007 finishing a good 7th overall.
Davy is pictured shaking hands with Neil and Cynthia Haslam, Team directors, after the final round at Brands Hatch on the 15th October 2007.
Donington Park was to be the first of 2 double header rounds to compensate for being rained out at both Oulton Park and Knockhill meetings.The VanFit Yamaha team went testing at Donington 2 weeks prior to the race meeting in order to prepare and provide Alastair with the best opportunity for the 2 races to come. This paid off handsomely when Alastair qualified on 2nd row of the grid equalling his best qualifying performance.
In the first race Alastair slipped easily into 3rd position at the first corner and cam e round in 5th at the end of the first lap. A few laps later he was pushed wide which dropped him back into 10th position but in a close knit bunch of top riders he fought his way back to take 8th place and another 8pts.
Overnight chief technician Derek made some minor alterations to the set up of the bike which Alastair tried on the Sunday morning warm-up session.
The second race was closer fought with Alastair battling throughout with championship contender Steve Brogan and ex Superbike rider Pete Hickman which saw Alastair as high as 6th place. He eventually finished a solid 9th again coming away with good points and in the top 10 of the championship table.
It has been a solid performance from Alastair this weekend and in the NCT VanFit Yamaha teams first year in the Superstock championship this represents a solid achievement to date. Alastair should finish at least 8th in the championship by the end of the season.
The teams focus now moves to the final round at Brands Hatch on 13th/14th September which again is a double header. The NCT VanFit team will be out testing on the Brands Indy circuit prior to race day.
Developing markets and particularly the Far East were firing on all four cylinders last week, as investors continued to pour money into the emerging economies - confident that growth will continue to outpace the West. Despite all the problems of the recent liquidity squeeze, the Pacific region has been very resilient to the turmoil sweeping through the developed markets - so much so that many stock market indices have hit new all-time highs. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng ended the week up another 5% as a wave of money, mainly thought to be from the Chinese mainland, hit the market as investors rushed to participate. As The Daily Telegraph said, after red-hot expansion of 5.6% in 2006, regional growth is still expected to hit 4.5%, which is safely above long-term trend. Whilst China’s per capita income may only be a tenth of Europe’s level, no one is in any doubt that the balance of economic power has shifted back to Asia after a 300-year hiatus. The evidence for this lies in soaring market prices of the building blocks of a modern industrialised state - energy, metals and food.Although there are some concerns about another bubble developing and the ramifications of the credit squeeze aftermath, the world remains awash with liquidity in search of a home. The Financial Times noted that recent gains in the emerging markets offered a fresh sign that investor risk appetite was recovering, with the MSCI Emerging Market index touching a record high last week - having risen 30% so far this year. Equity markets in the mature economies did, however, make a little progress too, with the Dow Jones nudging back towards its own all-time high as Wall Street traders regained confidence after the summer tremors. But it was all rather perverse - economic news was not good, but with each piece of disappointing news, the market reacted positively. The reason, according to The Financial Times, was that the news would hasten additional interest rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve. And the news was indeed pretty awful.
