Luke Stapleford bounced back into British Supersport Championship [BritishSSP] title contention with a comfortable second win of the season in Race 2 at Snetterton.

The Profile Racing rider came into Sunday’s encounter on the back foot after seeing an almost certain victory in Race 1 disappear into the dust after a mistake with just over a lap remaining.

Losing him the overall series lead to Ben Currie in the process, this time it was the Australian rider who’d find himself struck by the championship leader’s curse when he hit problems while leading early on.

Indeed, after getting the hole-shot into Turn 1, Currie on the Oxford Products Ducati Panigale V2 looked in good shape for his first win of the season. However, after running off down the escape road with a technical issue as he came into Brundle on lap two, he’d lose the lead to Stapleford and slip out of contention.

From here Stapleford was not to be disturbed, leaving his rivals to wrestle over the remaining spots to pull away the winner by just over +1.5secs.

Behind him, Rhys Irwin prevailed in a scrappy fight with Race 1 winner Tom Booth-Amos, the pair jockeying for position once they’d shaken off the likes of Jamie Perrin and Eunan McGlinchey in the earlier stages.

Though Booth-Amos - complaining of set-up issues on his Gearlink Kawasaki - had hustled his way into second place, Irwin fought back in the closing stages by punishing a wide moment by his rival on the Suzuki GSX-R750.

Booth-Amos fought back and was lucky not to be caught out when Irwin’s scythe up the inside of a backmarker at Coram almost sat him up into the path of the Kawasaki tracking them around the outside.

In the end, Irwin held firm for another strong podium finish for Astro-JJR, while third for Booth-Amos sees him move to the head of the standings once more.

It remains close though with Stapleford rebounded to be just two points shy of Booth-Amos up top, while Currie - who fought back to ninth once his Ducati fired into life again - is just eight points down on the summit. Even Irwin is inching into contention, 13 points off the top.

Just off the podium, with McGlinchey’s best result of the season being ruined by a collision with a backmarker late on, Tom Toparis came through for fourth place, ahead of Luke Jones, Perrin and Eugene McManus.