Motorcycling: Market Rasen twins make history with one-two

Tom won the Superstock 600 race with his twin brother Tim taking his second successive second place, just six seconds behind.

The Lincolnshire riders rewrote the history books as the first set of brothers, as well as twins, to record first and second in the class.

The only twins to have finished on a podium were Sam and Alex Lowes in the GP125 championship, also from Lincolnshire, 11 years ago.

“It’s been a long time coming, but it’s safe to say that dreams do come true,” Tom said. “It still hasn’t sunk in how special today has been for us.

“The team has run like clockwork all weekend and we finally got the best reward possible, a one-two podium and making history in the process being the first-ever twins to take the top two steps.”

Tom was consistently fast during free practice and qualifying and topped the leaderboard in the two free practice sessions.

He missed out on pole by six-thousandths-of-a-second and started the 12-lap race from the front row.

As the race got under way, Tom took the lead at turn one and began to pull away from the pursuing pack, setting the fastest lap on lap three with a time of 1min 53.746secs, just 0.9secs outside the existing lap record.

Tom stretched his lead to eight seconds at the midway stage of the race before easing off to bring the Chalk Racing Kawasaki home for his first win of the season.

His 22-year-old brother Tim was third in the first free practice and eventually took fifth place in qualifying to start directly behind his brother on the second row.

Tim didn’t get the best of starts, but soon moved up from sixth to fifth, and on lap five scorched through to third place.

One lap later he passed Brad Jones, moving into second and got his head down to catch his twin.

But he had company as Ryan Vickers was right on his back wheel and several times tried to pass.

On the final lap Vickers made his move, but as they approached turn one he lost control and crashed, leaving Tim to retain his second place which he held to the chequered flag.

Tom added: “A massive thank-you goes to all our family, friends and sponsors for sticking by us through thick and thin over the years; it wouldn’t have been possible without all the team work and countless hours devoted to racing!

“Special thanks to Billy Pearson, Craig Bubba Sprigg, Fred and Jo, mum and dad, and Jason Hall for their input this weekend. We all made it happen.”

Tim moves up the rider standings to fifth on 56 points while Tom is in eighth on 43 points.

The next round is at Brands Hatch over the weekend of July 21 to 23.