Down Under will certainly make the Europeans run for their money because, at Tierp Arena, only Per Bengtsson was able to stop Ashelford winning his first-ever UEM Championship race.



“I have friends in Norway and have been there several times,” explains Ashelford. “A few years ago I said to them I’d once wanted to race in the European Super Twin Championship. Well, this is my tenth year in the sport and it was the right moment to fulfil that dream. In Australia we run Top Bike and we have to race with our Super Twin against Top Fuel Bikes. That’s not a fair competition so I wanted to run in an all-Super Twin class against the best racers. So here we are,” says Mark. “We shipped the bike to Norway, bought a coach and, for the next months, that’s our home, hotel, workshop and bar. Ross, Robert and Peter will stay with me in Europe and Danny will fly back to Australia and come back later. The bike arrived on May 3^rd and we had our first race at Gardermoen where we ended up in second place. There was not enough time to go to the Main Event but, after Tierp, we’ll go to Alastaro, Gardermoen, Hockenheim and Santa Pod and do the full European tour.”

Mark Ashelford

Mark’s current Super Twin is already six years old, with an American frame put together in Australia. A special item on the bike is the parachute. “We’ve already had it for four years now and it’s perfect. We were the first to run that on a Harley and now almost three-quarters of the bikes have one,” says Mark.



In his homeland he ran a two-bike team, Attitude Racing, with his brother, Ian. Alongside their impressive list of achievements, Mark and Ian will go down in history as the first brothers in the world to do a six-second side-by-side pass at over 200mph in the final at the Winter Nationals at Willowbank Raceway. “I’m looking forward to race against Europe’s best Super Twin riders and I’ll do my very best to beat them. But having fun is just as important. One of my goals for this European tour is to break my 6.70sec and 344kph/214mph personal bests,” Mark says.



After the Tierp race most of those objectives had already been met. Mark broke his personal best several times, ending up with 6.618sec and 353.40kph/219.59mph. Only Per Bengtsson was able to prevent him reaching his last goal, to beat the European Super Twin racers. From the number five qualifying position (6.632sec) Mark had defeated the winner in Hungary, Jan Sturla Hegre, in the quarter-final and Hans Olav Olstad in the semi-final before coming up against Bengtsson. So the Australian ended his European UEM debut as the runner-up. But of course he still was an extremely happy man. “I should like to thank everybody for their generous support and help. I’m sure we’ll have a great time here.”