Britain’s Gino Rea ended a challenging Silverstone MotoGP weekend with a positive top ten finish after finding himself playing catch-up after losing the first session on Friday.

The Londoner crashed out of FP1 and lost vital data-gathering time but a good performance in yesterday’s morning warm-up session saw him find an extra six-tenths of the second.

“It’s been a positive Sunday to finish the weekend, starting from a strong performance in the warm up where I went 0.6 seconds faster than I did in qualifying to finish 13th. Unfortunately in the race my first few laps weren’t so strong,|” said Rea.

“I lost the front going into turn one and somehow saved it on my elbow. At the time I thought that my race over so I was glad when I stayed on the bike. That incident let a few riders through and by the time I got back past them the big group in front had gapped us.

“I was behind Salom and I thought he would get us back to the group but he didn’t have the pace and I couldn’t pass him. It’s frustrating but it shows I’m capable of being a lot closer to the front than we have been recently. Salom is a top rider and in one of the best teams so it was nice to battle with him.”