Royal Air Force Reserves Racing in association with Honda made some great progress at Brands Hatch this weekend, but points still elude Simon Andrews and the team.

The red, white and blue Honda Fireblade was completely refreshed for the National Superstock 1000 race at the Kent circuit this past weekend after an extremely punishing first half of the season on the short circuits, North West 200 and the Isle of Man TT.Andrews was fast out of the gates in first qualifying, finishing the session in fourth place on the GP configuration of the famous circuit. As the no.6 rider pushed the pace harder, going 1.5 seconds a lap faster between the qualifying sessions showed up some set-up issues with the CBR1000RR and the rest of the weekend was spent ironing those issues out.

Despite qualifying in 21st position for Sundays race, the Evesham rider had a point to prove and more chassis changes were made for Sunday morning warm-up and again for the race to find the perfect set-up.When the lights went out, Andrews was boxed in at the start and the heavy traffic in the competitive class made it hard to demonstrate the Hondas corner speed, but the 28-year old dug deep to finish 17th place, one spot behind John McGuinness on the first Fireblade home.