Motorcycle racer Josh Corner's race against time to make Pirelli National Superstock 1000 Championship at Oulton Park

Teenage motorcycle racer Josh Corner has had to '˜beg, borrow and steal' in a race against time to make this weekend's big Championship event.
Josh CornerJosh Corner
Josh Corner

The 19-year-old has faced a hectic fortnight to prepare himself for the bank holiday weekend as the Pirelli National Superstock 1000 Championship heads to Oulton Park in Cheshire.

Josh, from The High Road, is ready for a new challenge after effectively parting company from the team he started the season with at Silverstone earlier this month.

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He had initially signed to the Northern Escalator team this year to pilot a Kawasaki ZX-10R alongside team-mate Jesse Trayler.

However, after a tough opening round the team have restructured and brought back last year’s rider Adam Jenkinson for the remainder of the season.

The team has given Corner the bike to run himself for the rest of the year as a satellite outfit and it has been prepared by Kawasaki experts MSS, who Corner has worked with for the past three years.

But he has had to spend the last fortnight trying to source everything else needed to run himself in the leading race series, which runs as part of the support package for the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship.

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This includes an awning, sourcing a van, tools and the many other things needed to be able to race this coming weekend.

He has retained his trusted mechanic Martyn Phillips and is now hoping everything will come together before the event starts on Saturday morning.

“It’s been a hectic few weeks, I haven’t stopped at all,” he revealed.

“I basically had a bike, my dad and Martyn and we’ve had to find everything else ourselves.

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“It’s been a case of beg, steal and borrow to get us to Oulton but we’ll be there and doing everything we can for a good result.

In the opening round, Corner and team-mate Trayler struggled to get to grips with the Kawasaki but they weren’t alone.

This year the BMW has emerged as the strongest machine and now all riders on the Japanese marque are having to worker harder to find a set-up to rival their German rivals.

But the former Supersport Evo race winner is confident he and the team can get their machine up to speed, and hopes he can push for a much better weekend this time out.

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“I wasn’t happy with finishing 25th at the first round and I feel I should’ve been able to get a lot higher up the order and at least get into the points.

“I’ve had some great people working on the bike this week and I think I just need to look at this round as the start of my season and forget Silverstone happened.

“Yes, we know it isn’t going to be easy because this championship is fierce but we know we can get there.

“It’s going to be very different running by ourselves but having Martyn is very important to me as he knows how I work and he knows how to get the best out of the bike for me.

“I’d like to think we can chase a decent points finish and then take it from there.”