National Superstock 600 rider Matt Bilton had a good warm-up to his 2009 season with a race win at last weekend's Bemsee Centenary meeting at Brands Hatch.

Bilton finished the day with a win in the club's Superstock class, taking the chequered flag with a 7.7s lead and was pleased that he managed to get back to his 2008 pace – and came away with no broken bones.

We hope to be more competetive from the off this season so long as I dont not break anything before the start of the season this year," said Matt. "I broke my collarbone at Cadwell last year, two weeks prior to the first round.

"Last year's bike has been refreshed and hopefully will have a little more power with the added kit head gasket."

Bemsee race report by Andy Bilton

Stocksport.Q. 4th. 49.385
Supersport.Q.3rd. 49.303
 
Saturday Race 1. Supersport . Matt got a bad start and it took him a while to get past a couple of other riders on supersport bikes but finished in 4th.
 
Saturday Race 2. Stocksport. Again a bad start saw Matt have to pick his way past a few riders buy which time the front runners had got away, but he closed them down posting the 2nd quickest lap of the weekend in Stocksport with a 49.000 finishing 5th.
 
Sunday Race 1. Supersport. Matt got a good start and kept his 3rd place with Ashley on his tail, for 3 laps they battled ending on lap 3 for both of them in the kitty litter.
 
Sunday Race 2. Superstock. The number one bike was out of action ,so we quickly prepped the 06R6 and got it scrutinered.( we had taken this bike with the intention of selling it to an interested party). It took a while for Matt to get the feel of the bike by which time the lads in front had got away. He came home in fourth place.
 
Sunday Race 3. Supersport. The heavens had opened and we had a wet race which Matt enjoys. He chased the two Supersport riders who had been out in the previous wet race and came home with 3rd place.
 
Sunday Race 4. Superstock. The track was drying now but wets were still the order of the day. Matt got off to a good start in 3rd and by the end of the 1st lap had got to the front. He then set down to putting some quick laps in and stretched his lead to 7.7 secs by the end of the race and managing to better the next best lap time by 0.700 sec.
 
A win in the final race made up for what Matt thought was a poor performance in qualifying and he had been quite hard on himself about this, going round the track on his mountain bike on Saturday night to reflect on this. It seemed to do the trick.