Howie Mainwaring-Smart showed his battling qualities on a tough weekend at Brands Hatch, coming away with points in the final race of the weekend.

It was a tough weekend for the Smiths Racing BMW team at the fourth round of the MCE British Superbike Championship with Jakub Smrz, Howie’s teammate not able to race following a crash in Saturday’s practice.

The Gloucester-based Smiths Racing BMW team were back in action this weekend for round three of the MCE British Superbike Championship and whilst it proved to be a challenging weekend for both Howie Mainwaring Smart and Jakub Smrz, it was Howie who was able to give the team their second best result of the season.

A crash on Friday put Mainwaring Smart very much on the back foot and he qualified in 26th place, albeit just over a second off the pole position time. It was going to be hard work for the Aylesford rider in the first race with the short Indy circuit making it difficult to overtake but he dug deep and was unlucky to miss out on the points on the BMW, crossing the line in 16th place, but still only 14 seconds off the race winner Leon Haslam.

The result gave him the better starting position of 18th for the second 30-lap race and he made it count with some determined riding. In the points as early as the fifth lap, Howie was part of a four-rider battle for 13th place and with 20 laps gone, he consolidated 13th to eventually cross the line to take his second best finish of the season, to add to his 11th place in the previous round at Oulton Park for the former double British Supersport champions and TT winners.

Speaking after the weekend, Mainwaring Smart: “A big crash on Friday meant I lost an awful lot of time during the free practice sessions and even in qualifying, I was nowhere near the pace I needed to be.

“I was naturally a bit down but we made some big changes today and although I couldn’t get into the points in the first race, I made good progress to go from 26th to 16th. We made further progress in race two and were able to fight for some good points and it was nice to be involved in a real good battle.

“The team worked really hard all weekend so full credit to them as we’ve definitely made a step in the right direction.”

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