Popular Irish road racer Derek Sheils will make his Isle of Man TT return in 2026 with a new team and ride BMW machinery prepared by Peter Hickman\u2019s PHR Performance.<\/p>\n
Sheils made his TT debut in 2013 and has been a mainstay on the road racing scene, as well as the Ulster Superbike Championship, ever since.<\/p>\n
However, in recent years, he\u2019s scaled back his racing activities, with his last outing at the TT coming in 2022, while his most recent road racing appearance was at Armoy in 2023.<\/p>\n
In 2026, he will compete in a full campaign on the roads and in the Ulster Superbike series with Cosmic Racing, and will ride a BMW M1000RR prepared by 14-time TT winner Peter Hickman\u2019s PHR Performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be back next year with a new team called Cosmic Racing, which is a company run by Irish lads Matt Crosson and Ivor Hatton, who are in the wind turbine business in Australia,\u201d The News Letter quotes him as saying.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have a brand new BMW M1000RR, which is being built as we speak by Peter Hickman\u2019s PHR Performance, and we should have it in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team will have a whole new livery, and it\u2019s going to be a good set-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy plan with this team is to do a short circuit championship and a few road races on top of that; it just depends on what the schedule will be, so we\u2019ll just get rolling and see what way things go from there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve a little baby at home now, so things change, and that\u2019s why I had taken a bit of a sabbatical from the road racing for a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been busy with work, too, and I was finding it hard to get the racing in or get any training done.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut things have settled down a bit now, so we\u2019ll do a bit more racing next year and I\u2019m already back training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the craic and I enjoy the racing side of it so much, so why ? We\u2019ll have a bit of a shot at it again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The News Letter also report that Sheils is looking to add a second rider to the team for the TT and possibly the North West 200.<\/p>\n
However, Sheils notes that participation in the latter hinges on finding the right rider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Popular Irish road racer Derek Sheils will make his Isle of Man TT return in 2026 with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,28425,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-351566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-road-racing","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}