YATE’S Luke Hedger had a fantastic race in dreadful conditions to finish his biggest ever race in a superb 18th position.

Hedger was riding at the Moto3 British Grand Prix at Silverstone and admitted: “What an amazing experience.”

Having finished the Sunday warm up on Sunday in an impressive 13th position, and in wet conditions, Hedger and his team were hoping for more rain.

His lap time was just 2.637 seconds behind Danny Kent’s fastest time of 2:30.103 mins. Hedger went out onto the circuit and sensibly and progressively increased his pace in difficult conditions.

Almost every lap, he improved on the one before setting his fastest time of 2:32.740mins on his eighth and final lap during warm up.

When the race arrived, his team were in luck. It was pouring with rain during the afternoon and as the race got underway, the Navarro and Hanika teams took to the front but by turn three, they had crashed out, early victims of the conditions.

Hedger had started in 36th position and was already up to 29th early on the first lap. However another rider ran into the side of him and forced the Yate ace to crash.

Clearly he lost a considerable amount of time but got back on and rejoined the race determined to make up as many positions as he could.

Hedger then embarked on a great battle with the ex-Red Bull Rookie, Brad Binder and for a number of laps, they interchanged places on numerous occasions.

Hedger finally got the better of the South African rider on the fifth lap and was then looking to close in on Remy Gardner, the son of the former 500c world champion Wayne Gardner.

Gardner was 10.5 seconds up the road and, before he could catch Gardner, Hedger found himself mixing company with Isaac Viñales who had fallen and remounted and quickly overtook the Spanish rider.

With the race entering the half-way stage and after a number of fallers Luke Hedger was now in 26th position. Remy Gardner had caught and overtaken the other Binder brother, Darren Binder, and Hedger was closing fast. Luke was lapping at over two seconds quicker than the South African rider before this battle was interrupted by Romano Fenati who took a tumble from 3rd place, remounted and re-entered the race just behind Hedger.

With just seven laps remaining, Hedger was embroiled in a battle with Darren Binder and Gardner.

The three riders were separated by just half a second before Hedger made his way past Binder and finished the lap just four tenths behind Gardner.

The following lap Hedger moved up to 23rd position as he picked off Gardner.

He was now 2.87 seconds behind Fenati, but Hedger and Fenati were closing in on Phillip Oettl, who was another four seconds ahead. As the laps counted down, the Yate man caught and overtook the German rider and moved into 21st position.

He was now just tenths of a second behind Alessandro Tonucci.

Just four laps of the race remained and Hedger had closed right behind Tonucci. He was to suffer another piece of bad luck, though, as the Mahindra rider crashed right in front of him and he couldn’t avoid going into him as well, flying for a second time.

He was not going to give up, though, and showed his determination as he remounted for the second time in 23rd place.

But, with the weather conditions continuing to take their toll, two more riders fell moving Hedger back to 21st.

The incident with Tonucci meant that his battles with other riders were now over. He was some 30 seconds behind the rider in front whilst around 36 seconds ahead of Taz Taylor, the other wildcard entry behind him. The objective now was to get the bike safely home. With both Manzi, Bagnaia and Bastianini all crashing out in the closing laps Hedger brought the FPW Racing Kalex KTM Moto3 bike across the line in a fantastic 18th position.

Later, Hedger said: “I’ve enjoyed all weekend. I felt confident for the race after warm-up this morning, and without the two crashes, which I could do nothing about, who knows where I may have ended the race.

“I picked up eight or so places at the start before someone knocked me off on the first lap. Then having caught and overtaken several riders I couldn’t avoid the Mahindra lying in the track so fell off again. I can’t be too disappointed though. Before the weekend began I wanted a top 25 finish and I ended the race in 18th. I can’t thank Adrian enough for letting me do it.”