The weekend didn’t quite go to plan for Steve as the differing weather conditions made tyre choice a lottery. But despite opting to use dry weather tyres the H M Plant Honda star dug deep and was able to bring the bike home safely in a creditable 11th place.

Steve spent his weekend working on set up with the HM Plant Honda Supersport machine and posted some quick times in qualifying to secure a second row start to Monday’s 16-lap affair and soon moved into fourth place as the race began.

But a crash involving the leader brought the pace car out, shortly followed by the red flag and Steve had it all to do again.

With rain clouds again forming over the Cheshire circuit a quick decision was made to stick with the dry tyres and gamble the rain would hold off long enough for the race to be completed.

At the re-start, this time the race being run over the shortened 14 lap distance,  moved straight into second place before taking the lead on lap two. But after a couple of laps the rain began to fall causing chaos on the track as those on dry weather tyres began to fall back or crash.

Steve rolled it back, dropping down the order as far as 13th place. But his vast experience shone through and the Lincolnshire rider took his time and stayed in control of his machine. He made up two places on the final lap to cross the finish line in 11th place and claim five championship points to move to third in the rider points.

“After the red flag on lap three, the re-started race started off dry and I was up there mixing for the lead and settled into a really good pace. But then it started to drizzle and whilst my tyre choice was good for the dry, it was no good for a damp race distance,” Steve explained .

“A number of riders went down in the wet so I decided it was better to keep to a steady pace and bring the bike home in one piece with some points rather than risk anything. It’s not the result either the bike or I are capable of but that’s racing and at least we salvaged some points out of a bad weather weekend and closed the gap on the championship lead. Now I’m looking forward to the North West 200 and then the third round of the Supersport championship, where I hope to be back on the podium.”

 Steve returns to Cheshire at the weekend to take part in the annual Thundersprint event at Northwich. Following that he will travel to Ireland to prepare for the North West 200 races where last year he rode to victory in three of the four main events.