Millsport Ducati’s Jakub Smrz was having a positive MCE British Superbike weekend at Snetterton, after he put his bike on the front row – the first time for Ducati in three years, but he was taken out by Honda Racing’s Julien Da Costa in race one, and had to start race two from the fourth row.

Smrz was on the back-foot for the final race of the day and had to battle through the rest of the field, to eventually finish eighth, just behind Tyco Suzuki’s John Hopkins. But the Czech Republic rider feels the earlier mishap on track ‘destroyed’ the rest of his race weekend.

“I had some really bad luck this weekend, but that’s me. If stuff is going really well then something f***s up. In warm up I was feeling really good, and the soft tyre felt good too and it was doing the race distance easily - then race one I crashed, which wasn’t my fault and my whole weekend was destroyed,” said Smrz, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“In race two it took me a while to get a good feeling with the bike, so it was not an easy day, so we will keep working hard - and all we need is to have a bit of luck and we will get there.”