The Klaffi Alpha Boilers team have had a difficult start to their Southern 100 challenge with bad weather and race stoppages hampering their progress. “That’s racing!” is the perfect comment for how the Southern 100 has started out. First practice took place on the evening of Monday 9th July but heavy rain fell before the session started so Klaus Klaffenböck and his sidecar passenger Christian Parzer decided to stay in the paddock, as did many other sidecar teams. The weather improved and the roads did dry out but there were still a lot of large puddles around the track. This didn’t stop the team’s solo rider Martin Finnegan taking to the track. The Dublin based rider did 8 laps and was 2nd fastest behind Guy Martin. Practice continued on Tuesday 10th July with Klaffi and Parzer getting some laps under their belts and qualifying easily. Their main aim was to get plenty of miles in so they could improve their track knowledge. The first solo race was straight after the sidecar practice. Finnegan took to the pure road circuit for the 9 lap race but it only ran for three. The race was red flagged when a competitor crashed and his burning bike blocked the course. The rider sustained legs injuries during the incident. When the red flag came out Finnegan had been running in fourth position. “That’s racing!” he quipped. Once the incident was cleared it was too dark to continue racing. The team still have three races ahead with the sidecars taking to the track on Wednesday 11th July and again on Thursday 12th July with the Superbikes also racing on Thursday.