Maria Costello M.B.E. achieved an impressive podium finish on her Kawasaki ER650 Supertwin ‘the pizza race bike’ in it’s debut race at the Cookstown 100 which marks the start of the 2011 Ulster road racing season.
 
The Supertwin podium success tasted even sweeter due to the fact that Maria, the PR Agent for the Bering motorcycle clothing brand, had built the bike herself over winter, finishing it with only a day in-hand prior to this event.
 
With only a short three lap practice session of the Orritor circuit at Cookstown Maria’s lap times put her fifth on the grid for the Supertwin B Race.
 
A cracking start put Maria with the four front runners from the off. With each lap she got more accustomed to her new race bike and picked off riders one-by-one until she only had the leader, Tom Llewelyn, ahead of her. Maria chased hard and in doing so improved her lap times by almost six seconds. A red-flag incident brought the race to a premature end and saw Tom LLewelyn take the win from Maria, a delighted runner-up.
 
Maria commented on her success, ‘I’m over the moon with the pizza bike. Everything came together just in time. I only got to test-ride the bike the day before we boarded the ferry to Ireland. With so little testing time there was always going to be unknown territory. So I’m even more over the moon with it’s performance. It’s fast, light as a feather and handles brilliantly – it’s mega and I built it.”
 
The Supertwin race-bike has been nick-named the pizza race bike due to it’s former vocation as a pizza delivery bike.
 
Costello added, “The nick-name just stuck and it’s got a huge following on-line via the blog I wrote which documents the build from day one. I wanted to improve my mechanical knowledge and thought that the blog could be a way of passing on tips to others. Plus it’s a great way of giving all the people who supported the project a place to showcase their products.”
 
You can view the blog via her website www.costelloracing.com.
 
Maria can’t thank her personal sponsor Tony Morris of CMS and her boyfriend enough, without their hard work, advice and support the pizza race bike project wouldn’t have been possible. Special thanks also go to Gavin at Jap4Performance for the fantastic product support.
 
Costello would also like to extend her gratitude to Radicool, EBC Brakes, Rock Oil, Alpha Powder Coatings of Peterborough, Draper Tools, Hel, NGK, Hol Taj, Abel-Labels, Stomp & ChristianBaker.net.
 
The pizza race bike also carried the CoppaFeel! logo for the breast cancer charity Maria is supporting this season.
 
Maria hopes to contest the pizza race bike in as many of the Ulster road racing events as possible.  If you are interested in sponsoring Maria for the remaining rounds of the Supertwin championship, contact her via maria@costelloracing.com
 
Image courtesy of Simon Patterson Photography.