There was going to be someone missing from the trip to Knockhill.
After a busy season, and with plenty of miles under its belt, Evan’s Yamaha R6 was booked into CF Motorsport for an engine refresh. We could probably have squeezed one more race weekend out of it, but pushing our luck didn’t seem particularly sensible.
The problem was that this left us without a bike for the sprint races.
Fortunately, Evan was already going to Knockhill with another one.
He was due to ride the Ride Culture Racing KTM 990 RC R in the endurance race and, knowing the situation with the Yamaha, Tom and Sammi very kindly offered him the KTM for the sprint races as well.
It solved our immediate problem.
Although, looking back, perhaps we should have thought a little more carefully before putting the two of them together for an entire weekend.
They already had some history.
Evan’s first ride on the KTM had come as a wildcard guest rider for Ride Culture Racing at the Anglesey 12 Hour Endurance. That subsequently led to Tom and Sammi asking him to join the team for the remainder of the season.
The arrangement seemed simple enough. The KTM was for endurance racing, the R6 was for sprint racing.
Then Evan crashed the Yamaha at Cadwell and the KTM stepped in for the sprint races there too.
So by the time we arrived at Knockhill, this wasn’t going to be another first date. They’d already been introduced.
And they seemed to be getting on rather well.
There was, however, a bigger hurdle. Or perhaps, given where we were, I should say mountain.
Knockhill.
Evan had never ridden the circuit before, but neither had No Limits Racing visited it previously, so Friday’s Test Day was going to be busy and important for a lot of the riders. It gave Evan a full day to learn his way around before qualifying and, at the same time, continue getting to know the KTM.
Knockhill is short, undulating and busy. There isn’t any time to relax before the next corner arrives, so Friday was about getting laps in, working things out and gradually building confidence.
By the end of the day, Evan wasn’t just learning which way Knockhill went.
He was looking increasingly comfortable on the KTM.
Saturday morning brought qualifying for both the sprint and endurance races before the first sprint race around lunchtime.
Evan finished 4th in class.
Not spectacular on paper perhaps, but context matters. Evan still had less than 50 hours total seat time, was racing at Knockhill for the first time and was doing it on a motorcycle that wasn’t supposed to be his sprint bike in the first place.
Fourth in class was an amazing result and certainly gave us something to smile about.
Then Saturday afternoon brought a change of format, if not machinery, as Evan joined back up with Ride Culture Racing for the endurance race.
And just to make sure nobody got too comfortable, he managed to have a small off at Taylor’s Hairpin.
Thankfully, it was exactly that, a small off. With some help from the Orange Army, Evan got the KTM picked up and made his way back into pit lane.
The team did rather better than simply recovering from it too, eventually crossing the line 3rd in class.
We’ll take that.
Sunday brought the attention back to the sprint races, and there was already a sign that Evan’s weekend on the KTM was beginning to pay off.
His lap times from Race 1 had earned him his first front-row grid position, lining up P3 for Race 2.
For a rider with less than 50 hours total seat time, on a relatively unfamiliar bike and at a circuit he’d first ridden only two days earlier, that felt like a fairly significant step forward.
He went on to finish 4th in class again in Race 2, followed by 5th in class in the final race of the weekend.
So the final tally from Knockhill was 4th, 4th and 5th from the three sprint races, together with 3rd in class in the endurance.
Perfectly respectable. No, I’m going to say amazing results.
But the results weren’t the only thing that caught our attention.
Something else had been developing throughout the weekend.
Each and every time Evan went out on the KTM, he looked a little more at home on it.
What had started at Anglesey as an opportunity to ride somebody else’s motorcycle was beginning to develop into something far more interesting. He was learning what the KTM wanted from him and, in return, it seemed increasingly willing to let him have a bit more from it.
The differences from the R6 hadn’t disappeared. Evan was simply getting better at understanding them.
He was adapting.
And progressing.
Quickly.
By the end of the weekend, it didn’t feel like we’d simply borrowed a motorcycle because the R6 was away having some work done.
That was slightly worrying.
The Yamaha had been at the centre of Evan’s racing from the beginning. It’s the bike he’d all but learned to race on and the bike we’d developed around him.
More importantly, we’d already made plans for the future.
We’d commissioned CF Motorsport to build a second Yamaha R6 ready for the 2027 season.
So we didn’t just have one R6 to consider.
Technically, we already owned two.
Our commitment to the Yamaha was fairly clear.
Then along came the KTM.
At first it was just a 12-hour endurance ride.
A chance to get some additional, valuable seat time through endurance racing.
Then it saved the day, and the weekend, by stepping in at Cadwell.
And now we’d let Evan spend an entire three-day weekend with it at Knockhill.
You can probably see where the problem was developing.
We’d started the weekend grateful to Tom and Sammi for lending us a bike while the R6 was away.
We finished it wondering whether we’d inadvertently introduced Evan to something he’d taken a shine to.
The R6 wasn’t going anywhere. It was simply away getting the attention it needed and would be back soon enough.
In fact, there would soon be two of them.
But relationships can become complicated when someone else enters the picture.
And by Sunday afternoon at Knockhill, it was beginning to look suspiciously like two’s company and three might be a crowd.