Shropshire British Superbike racer shocked by £200,000 theft of motorbikes

Sam Hornsey, from Ludlow, signed for Team WD-40 for this season's British Superbike campaign and was all set for his debut season after working his way up to the country's premier motorbike class.

But after three motorbikes – two Kawasaki ZX-10 superbikes and a Kawasaki ZX-6R supersport machine – were stolen from the workshop in Sheffield on Friday, along with valuable equipment, the 22-year-old has been left nervously waiting for news from the police.

Mr Hornsey said: "There are only three-and-a-half weeks until the opening round of the campaign so it's come as a huge blow. One of the superbikes has been recovered after it was found a couple of miles away but the other two are still missing.

"They tried to drive them all away and we think they couldn't get it started again so they just dumped it by the side of the road.

"They also took the factory swing arms and forks, which also cost a lot of money and are difficult to replace.

"We haven't really had time to do any really testing or anything like that and we can't do anything until they have all been returned so it's going to affect the team massively.

"Everyone is still in shock about what's happened. Even though one of the bikes is back it wouldn't be fair for one of the team to start testing so we're just waiting for news on the others."

Team boss Brent Gladwin has offered a "substantial" reward for any information that leads to the recovery of the bikes.

He said: "Police have recovered one bike but the rest are still missing.

"The news has already been shared 1.3 million times on Facebook so we have been overwhelmed with the support.

"South Yorkshire Police has also done a brilliant job and the insurance people are working hard but this has really put the start of our season in jeopardy. This is the first time we've ever been targeted and we just cannot understand why it's happened because we are not a motorbike dealership, we are team that races motorcycles."