Josh Wainwright managed to score his first ever World Championship points this weekend at the FIM round of the World Superbike Championship at Silverstone. Josh and the Aye Gee Suzuki team were entered as a wild card entrant for the European Superstock 600 race and finished a fantastic 14th place over the nine-lap race round the super long Silverstone track.
Josh managed to get nearly 40 laps in over the weekend, which was great practice and preparation for the British round there in September. The youngster was put into the extremely competitive class and despite struggling to find a good set up for qualifying he managed to put the Aye Gee Suzuki in 20th place on the grid.
He gained a fantastic start and was lying in 16th place after the opening lap, the only rule change that they used was the use of a quick shifter, except that Josh was running the exact spec he has run in the British series this year. The other bikes on the field were certainly more advanced, taking advantage of the World Superbike rules.
Josh made a couple of passes during the race but the leading pack had already made a clean break. He rode a fantastic race and put in some good lap times and gained points at World Championship level.
He commented "I'm really pleased to have scored points here and be fortunate enough to gain the experience I have really enjoyed racing at this level with some very good riders. The whole weekend was great and despite a few problems setting up the bike we worked round that and hopefully I will have found myself a decent set up for when we come here next month. I'd like to thank the team and Suzuki for giving me the chance to do this and I hope I'll be able to do another round again in the future. The race was good but difficult I found myself getting arm pump on the closing few laps so I'm grateful that I managed to get in the points. I'm looking forward to getting to my home round at Brands Hatch this weekend."
Josh will be joined by a new team mate this weekend at Brands Hatch and that will be young Irish rider Andy Reid.
