North West 200 Coca Cola Zero’s Jon Kirkham obtained strong results in his debut on board the Yamaha R1 at the fifth round of the Norfolk circuit of Snetterton in the Visk British Superbike Championship.
Kirkham started his 2009 season with Jentin Racing, but his season looked to be over when the team not having the funds to continue.  Speculation started regarding the team’s situation and Kirkham not taking part in the fourth round at Thruxton.
Kirkham said: “I am well chuffed it didn’t look like I was going to be able to race, basically the team didn’t have the funds.  That was really disappointing as last year I worked hard to prove what I could do, to gain a ride with a top team and then this happened.”
“I knew the ride with this team was available with Michael [Rutter] no longer with the team so I ran Rob [Mac] and saw him at Thruxton.  I have really been thrown in at the deep end, I hadn’t sat on the bike until this weekend.”
In his first session Kirkham finished tenth overall, and even though he slipped down the order to 19th in second practice this did not concern as the reasons for the difficulties were known.  Improvements were made for session three escalating him back to just outside the top ten in 11th place.
Talking about his bike and team change, Kirkham said: “I was tenth in the first session then we made some changes for the second, but we went the wrong way and we struggled so we will be going back to the previous ones.  We have changed the suspension and we will make some changes probably to the gearing.”
 “The bike is completely different, it has much more horsepower.  I’ve not passed anyone on the straight this year and the already on this bike I passed someone on a straight. We are a third way through the season, not too far in so we have a good amount of season left.”