Luke Stapleford enjoyed a successful return to British championship racing, coming out of retirement to rejoining the Buildbase Suzuki team to deputise for injured Pirelli Natioinal Superstock rider Tim Neave.

Stapleford qualified the GSX-R1000R on pole position, before racing to two second places. In bothl, he found himself outside of the top six in the early laps, but he was able to cut through to fight for the win in the closing stages.

In race two he had a gap to bridge to the leader with just two laps to go. Able to get across it, it all came down to the final chicane, but a defensive move by leader Alex Olsen meant he was unable to get around the outside and was forced to settle for another runner-up spot.

“It’s in unfortunate circumstances that I was here this weekend, and I hope Tim recovers quickly. I enjoyed myself though. I’d done a bit of riding at the start of the year and always kept in touch with Steve, with a view to maybe doing one or two rounds and Thruxton was actually one of the rounds I’d had my eye on," he said.

"I’ve always been comfortable around here and I was used to the Superstock Suzuki coming into the weekend having had one as a practice bike - it’s a bike you can just get on and ride, it doesn’t excel in anyone area, it’s not the best at one thing but it’s good at everything, so it was easy to get on and go fast on.

“The races were good. I hadn’t set a specific target for the weekend, but I said I wanted to be in amongst it, so to qualify on pole and take two podiums, I’m happy.”