Saracen’s Head racer Ben Stafford shrugged off a couple of nasty crashes to record a solid finish at Silverstone over the weekend.
After his stellar debut in the British Supersport class at Assen, the Silicone Engineering team decided to enter him in this class for the last two meetings to get some valuable track time towards the end of the year – although his stock bike is still in standard trim and under-powered compared to the other bikes.
Qualifying was going well, with Stafford 17th overall on track and seventh in the Evo class. But, during the final few minutes of the session, Stafford was on a hot lap and crashed heavily in the final sector.
With only three hours before the race, the team worked to get the heavily damaged bike together and in decent shape for the afternoon race.
He made it and began working his way through the 40-bike field during the sprint race before crashing out on lap three.
Again, the team worked late into the night to repair the machine – and again all would be good for the next morning.
Starting race two from 20th, it was evident that all was not well and the heavy crashes had made the bike almost impossible to ride at race pace.
Still, Stafford managed a respectable 19th place – and his lap times were far faster than his previous visit to this track.
