Young prospect Jack Burrows keeping feet on ground after impressive start to British Talent Cup career

The 14-year-old schoolboy was ruled out of his first race in the championship at Navarra in Spain last month with a mechanical issue and had to start from the rear of the grid in the second race.

However, he battled his way through to finish 11th before clinching a top 10 result in the final race, crossing the line in ninth on the Burrows Engineering/RK Racing Honda.

Burrows, who won the Ulster Moto3 title last year before making the step up to British level, also set his fastest lap on his final circuit at Navarra as he continued to make eye-catching progress.

The Dungannon lad, though, is starting afresh on the British tracks, where Burrows will be a newcomer at each venue on the calendar.

Asked if he expected to claim a top 10 finish in his maiden weekend in the BTC series, Burrows said: “Definitely not. I was hoping for top 20 and I bettered that by quite a lot so I was really pleased.

“We’re not getting ahead of ourselves because we know that Donington Park will be harder as everyone knows the track, so we’re not going there thinking we’ll get another ninth. We’ll just give it our best and see what we can get.

“But it gave us a good show of where we are compared to those boys and I think if we maybe had another lap in the second race then I might have been able to get myself into that squabble [for fifth].”

A former two-time Ulster junior karting champion, Burrows is being guided by his father John, a former successful road racer turned team owner, whose advice has proven invaluable as he embarks on the next step of his career.

“Dad’s been great,” he said. “He knows everything about the mechanical side and he’s really good at keeping me level-headed.

“He’s been really important in my career but obviously no road racing for me – that’s definitely out the window!”

Looking to the future, young Burrows – inspired by six-time world champion Jonathan Rea – harbours a dream of competing in World Superbikes, but for now he is simply finding his feet in the competitive breeding ground of the British Talent Cup.

“The dream is World Superbikes because MotoGP is so hard to get to nowadays ahead of all the Spanish and Italian riders,” Burrows said.

“World Superbikes is the absolute dream but we can’t even start to think about that and I just have to see where the British championship takes me.”

His dad John admits he was unsure what to expect as Jack made his debut in the class but says he was ‘blown away’ by his progress at Navarra.

“He blew me away to be honest,” said Burrows Snr.

“In the final race when he started 11th and was up to seventh on the first lap before eventually getting ninth… the two things that stood out for me was he did his three fastest laps on the last three laps of the race.

“His very last lap of the race was his fastest of the weekend, 0.9s off P5 and about one second off the fastest lap of the weekend after qualifying 2.8s off pole.

“That showed what he found and what he was able to achieve.

“But I’m under no illusions that it’s going to take this year and it’s going to be difficult because we’re going to Donington Park and at a guess I’d say 25 of the lads on the grid have probably rode there before, whereas Jack hasn’t.”