Moto Rapido Ducati’s John Hopkins managed a career first at the Donington MCE British Superbike round, crashing in three successive sessions and fracturing his right foot which put paid to realising the top-five potential he had shown on Friday.

Hopkins went down at Craner on Saturday morning - necessitating a ground-up re-build of his Panigale - and then another spill in free practice three and an off in morning warm-up even tested the chequebook of team boss Steve Moore.

“Not the start of the year we were hoping for. A rough weekend. We started off alright, Friday we were working solidly through our programme. We didn’t make a whole load of changes to the bike but we were right there within the top five. Unfortunately, Saturday it started to go wrong. I had a crash in the morning at Craner Curves which was quite a big one and destroyed the bike. I had three crashes in three sessions in a row, which I’ve never done in my career.
 
"I went out in the morning, highsided and fractured my foot and sprained my ankle quite good so it was tough. We had a little bit of an issue, a minor electrical issue, which DNF’d us out of race one but we got out in race two and tried to make the most of it. I got the best start I could and started picking off quite a few positions in the beginning of the race and at one point had made it up into eighth. My foot just literally seized up and I was just struggling to shift and I had to come in. So not where we wanted but I did the best I could. It was just nice to finish the race.”