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Each year we pester a rider and team to let us film their preparations for the NW200. In 2007 we focused on the TAS Relentless Suzuki team and last year we followed James McCann.

For 2010 we thought we'd annoy two riders: Englishman, , who has signed for local team and local man Stephen Thompson, who will ride for the English based team.

We have given both riders small video cameras to capture behind the scenes footage of the various pre NW200 racing, testing and general shenanigans that these guys will get up to before the showdown on the north coast of Northern Ireland in May.

At the ´óÏó´«Ã½ NI NW200 press launch (23rd  Feb) we caught up with Stephen who answered a few bike related questions.

As always please add your thoughts to the blog.

We braved the travel chaos caused by the Icelandic Volcano eruption to get a chance to chat to Guy while he and team boss Wilson Craig revealed their new bikes at Silverstone.

The Kirmington man was in great form arriving in a casual look and helping himself to plenty of cups of tea during his numerous press and media interviews. We asked him all manner of questions, but you'll not want to miss his answer to what two things he'd take to a desert island. Watch the interview below

Ladies and Gentlemen we give you Mr Guy Martin....

The Kings Hall in Belfast played host to the Adelaide Motorcycle festival this month, so we grabbed a camera and Richard Petrie from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport NI Online, to ask the difficult questions...like.. how much for a tea ?....and headed up to see who we could find to chat about the NW200 and the possible podium candidates at this early stage of the season.

A certin Lincolnshire rider's name kept cropping up. Take a look at the video to see who we shoved the camera in front of ....including Eugene Laverty and Messrs Rutter Junior and Senior.

We met up with the time keeping gurus of the NW200, Richard Agnew and Walter Marks, to talk about how we could improve on the live lap times provided last year on the site.

It may look straight forward on our web page, as the rider information flickers and changes as the bikes cross over the transponder beacons, but to get the info off the official time keepers database, re-configure the data for the web and then get it past the beeb's firewalls and finally reversion the info so it fits neatly into our web templates, is no mean feat.

Many hours of head scratching, hobnob dunking and email ping-ponging between the beeb's finest minds and the timing boys - most of which goes over my head - was needed to get the live lap times working for race day 2009.

Richard, Chief Timekeeper for the NW200 and beyond, has put together a for all manner of road racing stats on behalf of .

It has all the results for qualifying and race day at the NW200 (and the rest of the Irish racing calendar) including grid line-ups, speed traps and inside leg measurements of all the riders.

Ok that last one was made up, but it really is worth a look. It also has information about how the bike transponders are used.

Take a look at the .