Kev Coghlan, the teenage Scottish motorcycle racer, is this year's winner of the DORNA backed scholarship rides for the rider showing the most potential for the future during the hotly competitive ACU Academy Cup which ran within the British 125cc Championship.

The 17 year old from Perth will join Bradley Smith and Daniel Webb in the DORNA MotoGP Academy team for the final two rounds of the CEV Spanish 125cc Championship to be held at Valencia and Jerez during November.

Coghlan has already experienced racing with the team in Spain, giving good account of himself, and has recently tested with them again - now, he will be bidding to equal the success of 14 year old Oxfordshire rider Smith who became the first British rider to win a round of the series, at Albacete, earlier in the month.

DORNA have also confirmed that they will support two other riders, James Westmoreland and Dan Linfoot in three races in Spain this before the end of the current season.

Westmoreland, who with a late run of form, winning three times in the British Championship, finished that series as runner-up to the overall title winner Christain Elkin, but was the actual winner, on points, of the ACU Academy Cup. Linfoot, the highest placed `wild-card' finisher in the British 125cc Grand Prix, was second overall in the Academy Cup

They will take part firstly in a Regional Championship event at Valencia prior to the final two rounds of the Spanish Championship. They will be riding Honda motorcycles from the AJO Team with the full staff and backing from the 125cc World Championship Team.

This brings to FIVE, the number of young British riders enjoying a major booster to their career by being given the opportunity to race in a series that is reckoned to be the strongest outside the World 125cc Championship and which is vital career step for aspiring grand prix riders.

“We are delighted to be backing these highly talented riders - this continuing support of rising talent is unparalleled in Britain and underlines the major commitment that we have to racing in this country,” commented a DORNA spokesman. “We are providing the opportunity for them to achieve their true potential and hopefully to move on to World Championship action, to which we are fully committed.”

ends