Roads: Lee Johnston reveals that Ashcourt Racing will withdraw from racing at the end of 2024

Lee Johnston has confirmed that the Ashcourt Racing team will withdraw from racing at the end of the 2024 season.

The Isle of Man TT race winner made the announcement on his popular YouTube channel, having ridden for and managed the team for the last five years. Together they have celebrated Johnston’s maiden TT win, as well as victories at the North West 200, Ulster Grand Prix and in the British Supersport Championship.

“This is hard for me to say because this team has been a massive part of my life for the majority of the last 10 years,” Johnston said on YouTube. “The situation is that the boss has purchased the company back and is putting massive investment and time into that and so is just too busy to be able to be involved in running the team at the minute.”

Johnston then proceeded to showcase a highlights reel of his time with Ashcourt Racing and all of the good times they’ve had together, before thanking team owner Phil Reed and the entire crew.

“The first person I want to thank, probably more than anybody else because he’s the boss and has put quite a lot of time and money into me for this period of time, is Phil Reed. A lot of you probably don’t know who he is or what he looks like because he’s quite a quiet character, and isn’t at the racing much – and even when he is there, nobody would even know he’s the boss.

“Without him, honestly, I probably wouldn’t have won British championship races, I might have never even gone to the NW200 because those guys took me there. I’ve won everything with this team and therefore I owe the most part of my career to these guys.

“A big thank you to Phil for everything he’s done for me. I don’t want to say step dad because he’s not that much older than me, but he’s more of a father figure or a mentor to me. Even when my own dad passed away, he’s done a hell of a lot for me. He’s much more than a boss. He means a lot to me and I wanted to make sure he and everybody knows how important he is to me.”

Johnston’s focus now switches to his future in racing, and he admits he’s more motivated than ever after battling through some serious injuries in the last couple of years.

He suffered life threatening injuries after a crash at the North West 200 in 2023, an incident which left him a coma and with a long list of injuries including a broken femur, shoulder and ribs, as well as a collapsed lung.

At the beginning of 2024, whilst training with the aim of making a return to action at this year’s road racing events, Johnston fractured his right tibia and fibula at Cartagena.

“I feel fitter and stronger, so the motivation now is to try and secure a job for next year. The two directions that we could go down are, first, to go and ride for another team, sign for them, ride the motorbike, go home and essentially do the job. This is something I haven’t done for a while.

“The other option is to commit to financing and bringing in the budget and everything. I’ve had this comfort blanket of the boss and the companies involved with him, and that took a bit of that stress away.

“That’s the other option if I feel I could commit, or if we can get a title sponsor onboard and take that stress off. The boss has already agreed that he’s more than happy for me to use the truck and bikes etc. The infrastructure is massive, so we’re going to have to go down that route and explore if the options are there for that to happen. The next few weeks and months are going to be really busy, but I relish that, I look forward to this challenge so let’s see what happens.”

The team’s finale outing will take place at the final round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship season at Brands Hatch on October 11-13.