Ballymoney’s Darryl Tweed is counting the days until the start of the Irish road racing season after securing a “brilliant package” for 2026, when he will ride a Honda Fireblade for Jamie Lyons Racing by Ability Energy Ltd.

Tweed is coming off the back of a memorable year in 2025, when he became the first rider from Northern Ireland to win the International Road Racing Championship (IRRC) Superbike title.

The Ulster rider has no plans to compete in the European series this year, but Tweed is gearing up for a full calendar that includes all the Irish national road races, the North West 200, Isle of Man TT and Classic TT.

It's an exciting venture for Tweed and Northern Ireland team Jamie Lyons Racing, who are branching out into road racing for the first time. Omagh’s Lyons is also taking on a new challenge this year by competing in the Ulster Superbike Championship in the Superbike and Supersport classes on Honda machinery.

placeholder image — Darryl Tweed will ride the Jamie Lyons Racing by Ability Energy Ltd Honda in 2026 while Jamie Lyons will compete in the Ulster Superbike Championship. (Photo by Brendan McAleer)

Tweed said: “I am predominantly a national road racer, that’s where I excel and that’s where I feel most comfortable. I really enjoy them all so I’ll be at them all.

“It would be awesome if the nationals come back in the south because every one of them is brilliant and that’s just what I love – national road racing is my passion.

“I enjoy the quirks of every one of them and I just can’t wait to get back to a lot of them and see how they have changed over the years and the excitement will be there.

“We might actually get a full season of racing again and we haven’t had that since probably 2019,” he added.

“I haven’t rode the Fireblade yet so that will be my first run on one of the new ones; apparently they’re a great bike and everybody has a lot of good stuff to say about them. I’ve the right people around me to help me with the bike, so it should be good and I’m hoping we’ll do pretty well on it.

“I do know what I’m doing with the other bikes but it’s yet to be confirmed, and we’ll announce our plans in February.”

Tweed, who was nominated in the Race of the Year category at the Irish Motorbike Awards in Belfast after his dramatic Supertwin win over Michael Sweeney at last year’s Tandragee 100, has a busy period of testing planned ahead of the season-opening Cookstown 100 in April.

“I’ve quite a bit of testing lined up at the start of the season and we’ll be racing over the Easter weekend,” he said. “We’re starting testing at the end of February and we’ve testing in Spain, and some here locally.

“There’s a round at Bishopscourt before the Easter weekend and I could possibly be at it, so we’ll see how that goes. I intend to take in a few short circuits because we can go and see what we can learn off Jamie.

“It’s all change for the team and they’re excited and looking forward to it. They’ve been doing BSB and between that and the Talent Cup, Jamie is a well-represented wee rider, a great rider, and it’s good to have him there because he has great knowledge of bikes and set-up. The whole package they’re bringing is brilliant.

“We’re intending to do all the nationals plus the Southern 100 and we’ll be at the North West, TT and the Classic TT, but we won’t be racing in Europe this year.

“We’re looking at possibly doing an endurance round at the end of the year in Calafat with the classic bikes, but other than that we’ve nothing else planned in Europe.”