As the Sunoco British 125GP Championship contenders resumed their battle at Oulton Park, Banks Racing’s Luke Hedger, winner just a week ago at Brands Hatch, found himself battling for the lead of the race in the early stages.

This time however, it wasn’t to be as he crashed out of the lead whilst fending off eventual race winner, Rob Guiver at the fast left hander of Cascades approaching half distance. The result sees Hedger slip to third in the standings, but just four points off the lead in what is shaping up to be an exciting season for the youngster.

Full of confidence, the series leader was comfortably inside the top ten during both free practice sessions and then impressively reduced his lap time by almost two seconds to provisionally move into second place on the grid after the first qualification session.

During the early stages of final qualifying Hedger would be involved in a collision which ended his chances of improving his lap time. The Banks Racing crew studied the timing monitors closely for the remainder of the session and fortunately, Hedger would hold on to his front row grid slot, being shuffled down just one place to third for the start of the twelve lap British 125GP race.

Hedger completed the opening lap of the race in second position, and then began to chase down Rob Guiver who had built a lead of almost a second. Impressively he used the power of the Pete Banks prepared Honda RS125 to great affect, and on lap two set the fastest lap of the race, over two seconds faster than his qualifying time.

The battle with Guiver continued for the next few laps with Hedger leading the majority of the time as the duo built a seven second lead over the third placed rider. Unfortunately, on lap six as Hedger turned in, just fractionally wide at Cascades, he lost the front and took a fast tumble through the gravel which would end his race.

Uninjured in the crash, Hedger will be looking to make amends at the third round of the series in just under two weeks time, when the North East based Banks Racing team look forward to their ‘home’ round at Croft.

“The weekend went really good apart from the crash in the race. I qualified really well, on the front row again, which I was happy with. I enjoyed battling with Rob Guiver during the race and it was going very well up to the crash. I’m now looking forward to Croft and hope we can get a similar result to what we had at Brands Hatch," said Hedger.