By Dick Law.

Mitchell Lewis will ride in the new ASA Scaffolding British Championship Honda team in 2017. The team will be in the MX1 class and have already acquired additional sponsorship from Paul Irwin’s RFX, Fox clothing and helmets from Stuart at Offroad Southeast, CGI Sports, RC Motorhomes, United Grab with several others still in the negotiation stage that will be confirmed soon.

Although the Maxxis British Championship will be the team’s main aim they will be also competing in the Michelin MX National and Pirelli Masters national series plus selected national events.

The team is run by Lee Tolan of ASA Scaffolding Services who has been sponsoring a major team for the last four years, and several riders personally, but he thinks it’s now time for a change of pace. He plans to start with one rider but may expand.

Lee comes from a humble background and had always wanted to ride motorcycles since as early as he could remember and said: “I kept on and on at my dad to get me a bike and in the end he finally got me one. Dad didn’t have a van or trailer so couldn’t take me anywhere to ride it so I ended up riding over a local field and getting chased by the old bill. I guess that was my first time experiencing racing!

“I love the sport, and apart from my family it’s what I love to do. It’s my passion and those within the sport are my second family really. My company is doing well at the moment and I can afford to set up and run this team and it’s something I always wanted to do,” he said.

“For next year we just want to give Mitchell some good, no-pressure sport and hope that the results come, but in the future who knows we may find ourselves in a position where our riders will be under pressure to produce the results. But for now it’s one step at a time.”