No regrets from Reynolds on final season.

His 2005 Bennetts' British Superbike championship season may have been very far from what defending champion John Reynolds would have wanted, but the three time BSB champ has told Crash.net he has no regrets of the year which brought about his retirement from top level motorcycle racing.

Reynolds took his third BSB title in 2004, riding for the Rizla Suzuki squad, which is run from the Cresent Suzuki Performance Centre in Verwood, Dorset. It was at this location that Reynolds sat down to look back over his year with Crash.net Radio's Andy Stobart.

Reynolds started his title defence season with a crash before the season had even begun, meaning a spell in hospital after breaking his leg at the squad's first test of the season at Valencia. A month later Reynolds was out in action at the season-opening race at Brands Hatch, but the veteran racer later admitted he returned to the bike too soon.

After enduring two difficult race weekends at Brands Hatch and Thruxton, JR then sat out the Mallory and Oulton Park rounds of the championship, with eventual 2005 team-mate James Haydon stepping in to deputise. The season continued to be a difficult one, with continuity for the team to develop the bike being a real issue. The year then ended for Reynolds with a dramatic crash for Reynolds in the first practice at the season ending round at Brands Hatch where the outgoing champ broke his neck and back.

"No definitely not," replied Reynolds when asked if he'd hung up his leathers after winning his 2004 title. "I've still got a lot of fight left in me and I still believe now that if I was fit enough now I could ride a bike this coming year and do a good job for Rizla Suzuki. I'm convinced of that."

However, when Reynolds returns to full fitness, don't expect any race plans. "I'm made my decision and that's that," he said.

Of the season, and as it turns out, career ending crash, Reynolds can remember very little. "All I can remember is Dean Thomas going down the hill and pretty much that is about it," he explains. ""ll I can remember really is waking up in the medical centre, talking a load of gobbledygook to Toby, the circuit doctor, and that's about all. I don't really remember the crash at all."

It was in hospital that Reynolds decided to go back on his earlier decision that he would be racing once more for Rizla Suzuki in 2006. "I was mortified really. I was on the way down to Brands Hatch and I'd had a conversation with Paul Denning and basically he said that I could have a job if I wanted it with Rizla Suzuki, and I desperately wanted to do that," he explains.

"I was elated that I'd been offered a job to ride in 2006, but then of course the big crash on the Friday morning. It didn't really take that long to realise that this was another serious injury and one in a year where I'd spent three weeks in hospital at the beginning of the year and then looking at another four or five weeks in hospital at the end of the year, and when you work out there's only 52 weeks in a year and then work out that you spend roughly ten weeks in hospital, it's a fifth, and you start realising is it really worth it?"

Whilst Reynolds stated, 'there's plenty of other things to do in life,' the fan favourite will still be seen at BSB rounds in 2006, and in the familiar blue and yellow Rizla Suzuki colours too as he adopts a new role with the squad.