The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Kirton race Aaron Clarke returned home from Snetterton with two richly-deserved Superstock 600 points for draperRACING.
Having qualified a disappointing 28th at the Norfolk circuit, Clarke made up an amazing 14 places in the race to equal his best-ever finish in the series and take 14th place.
Clarke admitted that he struggled for the right set-up in qualifying. That, along with some untimely rain, saw him start on the tenth row of the grid.
As Sunday’s race got underway Clarke was steady away from the line to let his tyres warm up on the first lap.
But from lap two onwards he made up places nearly every lap.
On the second lap he was 25th, then the Lincolnshire racer made up another two places on lap three, before overtaking Liam Shellcock for 22nd one lap later and then moving to 20th on lap five.
He then battled with fellow Lincs rider Tim Neave, exchanging places with him on a couple of occasions before making the pass stick on the penultimate lap to move into 15th place and into the points.
Not content with that, Clarke he overtook Tom Oliver on the final lap to cross the finish line in a fantastic 14th place to pick up two championship points.
Clarke said: “That was a really good race for me and I equalled my personal best result from Oulton Park earlier in the season.
“We discovered that we had gone the wrong way with the settings in free practice and qualifying and we went for a soft setting.
“We changed it completely for the race to a hard setting and it proved to be the right way to go.
“The Yamaha was a completely different bike to ride and I have gone faster than ever before.
“Thanks to my team for their hard work and also to Paul Draper and all my sponsors for their continued support.”
He’ll be hunting for more points at Thruxton on July 22-24.
