YATE’S Luke Hedger had a much better weekend after the no-point result at Silverstone and came away from round two with a third place in his British Supersport Series.

It took place at the Oulton Park, Cheshire, in damp conditions. But Hedger seemed to relish this.

He worked hard throughout the practice sessions to find a suitable base setting on the Kawasaki ZX-6R. Everything fell into place for qualifying and he managed a fourth place for the opening sprint race on Sunday.

As race one got under way, Hedger got a good start but with the conditions still not good, he dropped back to seventh place. But by the end of the race he moved back up to fifth.

Race two began on a dry track and Hedger got a flying start to go from fifth to second by the first corner.

Hedger did not quite have the pace to stay with the leader but was locked in a fierce battle for second with two other riders.

The race was cut short on lap 11 from 16 because it started raining heavily. Because it was two-thirds through, the race it was called a result giving Hedger his first podium of the year and his first second place in the Supersport championship.

Those two results have moved Hedger all the way up to third in the championship Hedger said: “I’m really happy about this weekend and to finally get the ball rolling.

“I had a disaster at Silverstone and it’s really good to be back on the podium. Saturday was a tough day but we finally managed to get the bike working well for qualifying and I managed to have two really good races.

“In the second race, I could see the rain coming in and was hoping it wouldn’t catch us out.

“I wanted to fight hard for a podium and thought the red flag was for Taz but it was for the rain.

“It’s great to be back up on the podium and hope it will continue for the rest of the season.”

His team manager Michael de Bidaph added: “It was another really tough weekend for the team. We are really pleased that Luke was able to salvage something and secure us a podium.”