Neah Evans enjoyed her homecoming as her Storey Racing team took the round victory at the Tour Series event in Aberdeen yesterday.
Storey Racing were third in the team standings heading into round three and thanks to Evans’ fifth-place finish and team-mate Rebecca Durrell taking the individual runner-up spot, they seized the team prize on the night.
Nikki Juniper, from NJC-Biemme-Echelon, took her first win since joining the Tour Series three years ago and Team Breeze’s Jess Roberts was third.
Cuminestown rider Evans was fifth in the opening round of the Tour Series in Redditch and followed that up with a ninth individual finish at Motherwell on Tuesday.
However, a crash in Lanarkshire in the second round affected her performance on the night, feeling she did not have the legs to make the most of her promising position near the front on the final lap.
She said: “I crashed at Motherwell and wasn’t feeling 100%. I just had no sprint and it’s a dead turn coming into the final straight and I was just like ‘I’ve not got the legs tonight’. I tried to just keep the pressure on and make it a hard race so my team-mates would have a chance.
“I was fairly happy overall. My positioning for the final lap was a bit off – I should have just stayed on the front and kept the pressure on, but I tried to ease off and see if I could sprint. But there was just nothing there.
“It was a nice night, the weather was fantastic. I’m telling everyone this is what it is normally like in Aberdeen but they’re not believing me. The crowds were really good. It’s good to hear a familiar accent.”
She will not compete in the double-header in Durham next week as the series reaches the halfway stage, allowing herself some training time in Aberdeen.
It was a dominant night for Juniper, who claimed all three individual sprint wins and had the legs on Durrell in the home stretch on Union Street to take the victory. Durrell recorded the fastest lap of the women’s race, recording a time of 1:50.241.
Megan Barker, who won the opening two rounds, came seventh individually but Roberts’s third spot and Rhona Callander, from Stirling, finishing sixth was enough to see Team Breeze hold on to the lead in the team standings.