Honda Racing’s development rider Julien Da Costa got his first taste this year of an MCE British Superbike weekend, at Snetterton. Even though he crashed in race one he still hailed his time on the bike as a success, after they made changes to the CBR1000RR Fireblade that improved the bike for the better.

The team are only contesting four rounds of the championship as they are using this year to develop the bike for the 2015 series. They started the race weekend using Alex Lowes' championship winning machine, and started with the settings they used the last time they were at the 300 circuit.

After a successful test at Snetterton a few months ago the team were confident of taking away some valuable points and data from the event. Da Costa made a mistake on race one and crashed, taking Millsport Ducati’s Jakub Smrz with him. But race two went better, as he was able to finish in the top five, after successfully out-pacing Tyco Suzuki’s John Hopkins and Quattro Plant Kawasaki’s Dan Linfoot.

“The first race was a shame and I have apologised to Smrz, but from the second race I started from 13th position. I did not have a great start, but I was able to catch up with Hopkins and then Walker and Kiyonari and then he made a mistake and I overtook him,” said Da Costa, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"But I lost out with the leading group who were so quick. So I finished in fifth which was not too bad, and I enjoyed the race. We changed a lot of things, but we tried all types of different things – mainly with the engine.

“The main thing we wanted to achieve was to make the bike smoother when I open up the gas and to keep the power strong when exiting the corners, and that worked. Shakey is very strong and he knows his bike very well and the circuit’s too, and he has a good package. Maybe soon we will expect a podium when I am next back in the championship at Donington.”