It was a mixed opening weekend at the first round of the MCE British Supersbike Championship for the Forcefield Body Armour riders.
Despite several of the riders unfortunately having the test out the Forcefield products in various crashes over the weekend all walked away uninjured and went on to score several podium positions.
The first race was on Easter Sunday and the first round of the British Supersport Championship and the Forcefield riders had a great start to the year with Sam Warren and Ben Wilson gaining 1st and 2nd and Christian Iddon in 4th.
The second Supersport race on Monday was action packed after race leader and Forcefield wearer Ben Wilson had a 7.3 second lead in the wet conditions when he hit oil/fuel on the circuit causing him to crash out, after a long delay and restart Ben crashed out again with several other riders on the contaminated track and all the other scheduled races for the day were postponed and will be run at another round. Ben was excluded from the results and half points were awarded to the rest of the riders based on the results of the first part of the race. Forcefield riders in race two gained 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th with Warren, Billy McConnell, Iddon and Deane Brown.
In the British Superbike class it was an unfortunate result for the Forcefield riders, Tristan Palmer gained his first ever front row Superbike position and in the awful conditions he gained a great start but was unlucky to crash out on lap nine. Dan Linfoot was sitting in one of his best ever finishing positions in sixth place when he suffered a massive crash at the top of the first corner, destroying the air fencing but walking away with just a sore foot.
Linfoot - "That is possibly the biggest crash of my racing career and thankfully the Forcefield Body Armour did everything it needed to and protected my chest and back. I took a massive impact to the air fencing and ended up underneath it, I'm a little sore but nothing thankfully is broken. I'd like to thank Forcefield for providing me with such good protection."
His team-mate Barry Burrell also suffered a huge crash during practise, a big high-side on the Cooper Straight which forced the session to be red flagged. He was a little second hand and sore for the wet race and ended up in 19th place.
Burrell - "It was a pretty big crash I had and very fast, it happened before I even had time to think about it, I landed heavily on my back which knocked the wind out of me then my bike ran over my chest, everything is sore and I feel like I've been beaten up but nothing was broken and that's the main thing just a bit of tissue damage. My Forcefield protection certainly got tested out and did the job I needed it to do and it allowed me to continue racing for the rest of the weekend."
The ride of the weekend must go to PBM rider Keith Farmer who qualified in 21st position for the National Superstock 1000 race and in the shocking wet weather conditions the current Stock 600 champion came charging through the pack to take the best ride of the day and took the win, a stunning ride and fantastic start to his season.
Farmer - "I would just like to say over the first round of the Championship I was feeling very comfortable wearing my Forcefield Body Armour, I'd like to thank the Forcefield team for making me feel safe throughout the weekend and really pleased with taking the race win for my team and sponsors."
