MCE British Superbike veteran Gary Mason will finish the season with Dave Tyson’s Tsingtao Kawasaki squad after penning a deal at Thruxton this weekend to replaces the departed Harry Hartley.

The Lichfield rider, who quit racing in 2012 to concentrate on his Hornee Jeans enterprise, will be re-united with a lot of his old MSS Kawasaki crew as Nick Morgan supplies engines and years of technical expertise to the team.

“I’m peaking to be back and with my old crew too. Nick Morgan rang me to ask what the situation with TAG Kawasaki was, so I said it was a one-off so he explained the deal with Tsingtao and I jumped at it, I thought it would be awesome as it’s basically my old crew from MSS,” said Mason, speaking to bikesportnews.com

“2011 wasn’t exactly a bad year for us, we have got a lot of data so that was it. It’s deal for the rest of the season, it’s a great opportunity and I couldn’t turn it down. We can chip away for the remainder of this year in preparation for next season.

“In all honesty, I couldn’t hack being away from racing any longer. I had been chatting to Simon Andrews about coming back before he died. It’s going to be tough and there is no money out there, but we do it because we love it.

“I still have to make a living so I will just have to juggle the Hornee Jeans part of the business with racing. At the minute, I haven’t had time to think about everything but sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet.”