Northern Ireland's Mar-Train Racing team chief Tim Martin has passed over the chance to compete in the Brit🎃ish Superbike Championship next year to focus on landing the Supersport title.

The team made a stunning debut in the British Supersport class this year, narrowly missing out on capturing the title with Dublin rider Jack Kennedy as the championship went down to the wire at the final round at Brands Hat⛦ch.

Team principal Martin has already moved to sign former British Sup꧃erspor♏t champion Stuart Easton for 2013 with a second rider due to be confirmed this week.

However, Kenꦰnedy and young prospect Taylor Mackenzie and not expected to remain in the line-up.

Mar-Train could have switched to the BSB ranks in 2013, but Martin opted to remain in the Superspor𒐪t division for ano💙ther season with a view to making the move to BSB in 2014.

"We were in talks with Yamah♏a this year about moving to British Superbikes for 2013," he told the Belfast News Letter.

"The idea was that♎ we'd run one Superspoဣrt rider and a Superbike rider.

"But we didn't want to jump straight into 🎶Superbikes with a bike we'd never raced before🐬 and risk being uncompetitive.

"You can build a reputation up quite quickly but you can also destroy 🐻it quickly as well and we didn't want to go there to make the numbers up.

"If we go to BSB we wan💜t to go and be competitive," he added.

"The idea with Stuart is that he may have the chance to move up to BSB in 2014 with us if he wants to do that and by that time we'll have experience of the R1 and at least a base set𒁏ting to work with."

Few expected the team to make such a convincing de🦩but in the championship, but Martin had left no stone unturned in his preparat🃏ions.

"It was always going to be a lea♉rning year for us as it was our first full year in British Supersport," he said.

"We had done a l𝓰ot of hard work prior to going to the championship because we've been running a team for six or seven years.

"We brought in Andy Jamison [crew chief] and a few others who have worked in the British championship paddocks and that gave us a big head-start a🎉nd brought us up to speed quite quickly.

"Even though we didn't bring the championship home it was a fant�🎃�astic year."

Easton will also compete in the Mar-Trai🍰n colours at the North West 200 in May, where he returns for the first time since a life-threatening crash in 2011.