Orange Jerseys for Dev 33
At the recent NMCC motocross meeting at Long Buckby, friends of Dean Devereux came together to support his ongoing battle with illness. Dean arrived at the track expecting to help on mechanics duty for his friend Nick Collins. Actually he was to be guest of honour at the meeting with his own special pit and spectator area. A big group of his friends had all secretly entered to race as well, with fourteen riders wearing the same very special Dev 33 orange tribute jerseys. What a sight it was to see the orange jerseys battling up front in nearly every class. In all truthfulness the jerseys should have been yellow to match Dean’s original but that colour wasn’t available in time, and the orange certainly made them more noticeable. The riders in Team Dean were Nick Collins, Rob Collins, Jonny Lee, Jack Lee, Chas Lee, Ben Owen, James Berrill, Paul Field, John Abbott, Charlie Mitchell, Dan Whitehead, Alan Vissian, Max Barnett and Fraser Law. The high visibility of the team raised a lot of awareness, as well as £288.20 for Marie Curie. At the same time the team riders managed to rack up an incredible thirty top-ten race finishes.
Nick Collins explained, “Dean’s been riding since he was around 5 years old and it hit him hard when he realised he may never ride again, the next best thing was for him to pit crew for me and Jonny. So we decided that if Dean couldn’t ride we’d put a few laps in on his behalf.. Dean’s always been a loved and respected rider so it was hardly a surprise when what started out as ‘three men in a van’ turned out to be 14 riders a dozen vans and an entourage of about 50! It was great to see Dev there with a big grin chuffed to bits with the turn out, great racing and a cheeky acknowledging smile that it must have been a lap scorers nightmare. Cracking on cracking on .....”