Richard Britton

Richard Britton (b. 1970 d. 2005) was one of Ireland's leading Motorcycle Road Racers before his untimely death at Ballybunnion road races on September 18th 2005.

Born in 1970, Richard was married to Maria and had one son, Loris whom he called after the Moto GP star Loris Capirossi.

Career

Richards racing career began when he raced in Ireland's Clubman series where he won the 400cc class and in 1998 he moved to race on pure road circuits where he was sponsored by Alan Gregg of the Schimmell race team. At the end of that year he won the first of his four Regal 600 Championships but an accident at the start of the 1999 season meant he had to sit most of the season through injury.

In 2000 Richard was taken under the wing of new sponsor PJ O'Kane and was drafted into the O'Kane racing team. The next two seasons saw him again taking both of the Regal 600 championships. With new machinery for 2002, and for the first time in Irish history, Richard won his fourth, (and his third successive) 'Regal 600 Championship'.

In 2003, Patsy O'Kane withdrew from the sport but allowed Richard to keep the bike that he had campaigned his 2002 season on. It was difficult for Richard to obtain machinery in 2003 but with the kind help from Mick Morgan of ‘MSS Kawasaki’, theywho supplied him with a new bike for the up coming season. Richard took it to the limitfact|date=September 2008 and was duly crowned 'Irish 600 Road Race Champion' at the 'Dundalk Road Races', Darver, Co Louth, at the end of 2003.

In 2004 Richard moved to the DMRR racing team from where he achieved moderate success and in 2005 secured his own sponsorship to run what was to be his last season.