Team Alpha Boilers Racing - Incident packed start to Southern
100
 The
Klaffi Alpha Boilers team have had a difficult start to their
Southern 100 challenge with bad weather and race stoppages
hampering their progress. "That’s racing!"
is the perfect comment for how the Southern 100 has started
out.
First practice took place on the evening of Monday 9th July
but heavy rain fell before the session started so Klaus Klaffenböck
and his sidecar passenger Christian Parzer decided to stay
in the paddock, as did many other sidecar teams. The weather
improved and the roads did dry out but there were still a
lot of large puddles around the track. This didn’t stop
the team’s solo rider Martin Finnegan taking to the
track. The Dublin based rider did 8 laps and was 2nd fastest
behind Guy Martin.
Practice continued on Tuesday 10th July with Klaffi and Parzer
getting some laps under their belts and qualifying easily.
Their main aim was to get plenty of miles in so they could
improve their track knowledge.
 The
first solo race was straight after the sidecar practice. Finnegan
took to the pure road circuit for the 9 lap race but it only
ran for three. The race was red flagged when a competitor
crashed and his burning bike blocked the course. The rider
sustained legs injuries during the incident. When the red
flag came out Finnegan had been running in fourth position.
"That’s racing!" he quipped. Once the incident
was cleared it was too dark to continue racing.
The team still have three races ahead with the sidecars taking
to the track on Wednesday 11th July and again on Thursday
12th July with the Superbikes also racing on Thursday.
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