Ben Wilson’s return to form continued to gather pace with two impressive performances at Donington Park over the weekend.
The Kirton ace rode to eighth place in the sprint race and followed up with a fantastic fourth position in the feature race on Sunday in round three of the 2019 British Supersport championship.
After qualifying 12th in his class Wilson began the 20 lap sprint race from a fifth row grid position in the mixed grid of Supersport and GP2 riders and got away to his usual swift start to take up 10th place overall.
By lap four he was up to seventh (fifth in his class) but one lap later he was overtaken by Richard Kerr.
Wilson remained in eighth place until, on lap ten he was pushed back to ninth when Rory Skinner made a pass on him stick.
On lap 12 his teammate Ross Twyman passed him and that left Wilson to bring his Gearlink Kawasaki home in tenth place overall and a fine eighth place in his class to pick up eight championship points.
Starting the feature race from the fourth row in drying conditions after a heavy rain earlier in the day, tyre choice was to be the deciding factor on the result.
Wilson opted for an intermediate tyre on the front and a dry on the rear – but he was soon to discover it was the wrong choice.
As the lights went out he got a lightning start and was up to fifth place in his class at the first corner.
On the second lap he passed Richard Kerr to take up fourth place and, although he couldn’t catch the top three, he remained in fourth place.
As the race wore on he dropped back and lost touch with the leaders when his tyre began to overheat, but he had a ten-second buffer to Rory Skinner who was holding fifth position.
In the final few laps Skinner began to hone in on him and reduced the gap to just over a second on the penultimate lap.
But Wilson held his nerve and crossed the finish line with an advantage of just 0.1secs to record his best result of the current campaign.
Wilson said: “On reflection I should have gone for dry tyres all round instead of the inter on the front.
“Once it started to overheat I had to slow to conserve the tyre life.
“But I am happy enough with fourth as not far away from the podium. We continue with bike development and hope to improve further at Brands Hatch next time out.”
This strong set of results place Wilson in seventh place in the rider standings on 44 points.
The next round is at Brands Hatch over the weekend of June 14/16.
