NW200: John Burrows impressed by top newcomer Davey Todd's rapid progress

The 22-year-old’s best results included two excellent 12th place finishes, coming in Thursday’s Superstock race and Saturday’s first Superbike race on the Suzuki GSX-R1000.

Todd also claimed another 13th place result in Saturday’s Superstock race and 13th in the feature NW200 Superbike race, although he was out of luck in the Supersport class on the CBR600RR Honda, crashing out in the opener on Thursday and retiring from race two on Saturday.

Team owner John Burrows said: “As a team, we are very happy with Davey’s performance. There’s a very strong field at what is a major international event at the North West 200, with leading British Superbike riders through to the very best road racers.

“Prior to the event, I felt that the top ten would have been a very strong result for Davey and more realistically the top 15, so I think we achieved what we set out to do.

“I was also very impressed with how Davey’s lap times progressed throughout the day and how he was closer to the leaders. In the Superstock race on Saturday, he had the leaders in sight for a couple of laps and that was a vast improvement from where we started off.”

Todd, who is now preparing to make his Isle of Man TT debut, said the high-speed North West 200 course was ‘nuts’.

“I’m really happy with how it went. It was a tough weekend to start off with but it was just all about learning the track and getting used to it. The guys worked really hard to get the bikes sorted and the Suzuki GSX-R1000 was awesome.

“I’ve never gone that fast in my life and it was crazy getting used to that. It was really weird that the hardest part of the circuit for me was going down that main back straight and getting used to the sheer speed. It has definitely left me really eager to get on the bikes again at the TT.”