Ryan Farquhar's superb 2012 season showed no signs of slowing down at the weekend when the KMR Kawasaki rider took four wins from five starts at the Skerries 100 road races. Flyin' Ryan took victories in the Grand Final, Supersport 600cc, Supertwins and Moto 450cc races to take his win tally to the season to a stunning 30.
With heavy rain severely affecting conditions during Friday evening's practice sessions, race day dawned bright and sunny although the adjacent fields and paddock remained extremely muddy! Due to this, Ryan opted to just take out his 600cc machine for the opening Superbike race and, naturally down on power compared to the 1000cc machines, he finished in a somewhat unusual 5th place.
From that moment on, he was never beaten though with his first victory coming in the following Supersport 600cc race after a battle with Michael and William Dunlop. The latter crashed out on the fifth lap and with the result taken at the end of the fourth lap, Ryan took the win by 0.173s from Michael.
After an easy victory in the Moto 450cc race, Ryan's hat-trick was completed in the 7-lap Supertwins race where he was pushed hard by team-mate Jamie Hamilton. The pupil pressured the master hard in the early laps but, aided by a new lap record, Ryan slowly edged away and took the chequered flag over five seconds clear.
That just left the Grand Final where Ryan again went head to head with Michael Dunlop with the latter leading the way for much of the 8-lap race. However, Ryan, who used his ZX-10R Superstock machine for the race, was just biding his time and made his move on the final lap to duly take his fourth win of the day, this time by 1.71s. Hamilton's successful day continued when he took a fine fifth after earlier finishing seventh in the Superbike race.
"A few people were saying I had it easy at the Bush and Mid-Antrim races with a lack of opposition so, with Michael and William being here today, I was really fired up and out to prove a point. The weather on Friday left the whole paddock a bit of a mud bath so I decided to take the wee 600 out for the first Superbike race as I didn't want to mess the big bikes up with the Southern 100 so close," said Farquhar.
"I was never going to be in contention but it was a good fifth and I followed this up with a win on the same bike in the Supersport race. William and Michael were with me the whole time but I just kept my head down and it was a shame William crashed out as it was a great race. The 450cc race was straightforward enough but Jamie really kept me honest in the Supertwins race and I had to work hard for that one - maybe I'm teaching him too much! I'd done a bit more work to the bikes and they were working so, so well."
"That just left the Grand Final and with conditions drying up all the time in the paddock, I decided to take the Stocker out. It hadn't turned a wheel since the TT and was set up for the Mountain Course but a couple of warm up laps allowed me to get dialled in. The bike was working well, the sun was shining and after sitting behind Michael for a few laps I waited until the last lap to make a move so that he didn't have time to come back at me - it worked a treat so to come away with four wins is brilliant. A big thanks to Vauxhall for lending me a van and also to Millers Oils who I'm using this year. The gap between the Bush and Skerries allowed me to strip the bikes down and give everything a refresh and seeing how well all the components still looked is a testament to the quality of their product."
