With five podium finishes in the last five races, Pete Founds and Jevan Walmsley will once again be one of the firm favourites for honours in this year’s two 3wheeling.media Sidecar TT Races.
It will be the seventh year the duo has competed together and this year, like last, will see them line up on the FHO Racing DDM Honda that took them to a brace of second place finishes behind Ben and Tom Birchall twelve months ago.
They also posted their best lap to date around the 37.73-mile Mountain Course last year with a final lap in race two of 120.079mph which made them not only the second fastest crew ever but also only the second to lap at more than 120mph on three wheels.
Cheshire’s Founds, like brother Alan who’ll also contest the 3wheeling.media Sidecar TT races this year, has been raised within the three-wheel world, following in the footsteps of dad Des who competed at the TT between 1981 and 1997.
Like Alan, Pete also commenced his TT career as a passenger, having several outings between 1997 and 2007, the final year seeing him claim a pair of fifths with Allan Schofield. However, after a short time away from the Island, he returned in 2015 as a driver and has gone from strength to strength ever since.
After a low-key debut in 2015, Pete returned the following year with Walmsley in the chair for the first time and they claimed a superb second in the opening race. It proved to be a day to remember for the family as Alan joined him on the podium in third.
Since then, Founds and Lincolnshire’s Walmsley have been almost ever-present in the top six; indeed, in the ten races held since 2017, they’ve taken no less than eight top six finishes and recorded three second place and two third place finishes in the last five races.
With a total of six podiums now to their name, Founds and Walmsley are eager to claim the top spot for the first time but are expecting two equally tough three-lap races this time around.
“We were obviously really pleased with how last year went and having been brought up in sidecar racing, it was nice to see so many happy, smiling faces in Parc Ferme after two hard-fought races,” says Founds.
“The weather was so good last year that we were able to get in plenty of laps during practice week and that, together with our knowledge and experience moving on another notch, enabled Jevan and I to have our best TT to date.”
“The 120mph lap was the icing on the cake for us. I was something like 8-10 seconds down on Ben and Tom so knew I wasn’t going to make that up, but I equally knew I wasn’t going to be riding round the Mountain Course for another 12 months so got my head down. The weather was great and there were so many people waving programmes, so it was a special moment and one I’m very proud of.”
“Ben obviously has a new passenger this year in Kevin Rousseau and the other top teams have made some form of change, but I try not to get too worried what everyone else is doing. The bottom line is that I could make a strong case for five or six crews winning in 2024. That’s how competitive the Sidecar races are now at the TT, so we’ll just focus on ourselves and look to get into our rhythm as early as we can in practice week. You can’t force things at the TT, but we went faster in each session last year so hopefully that’ll be the case again this year and we can challenge for the victories once more.”