Reigning Motorpoint British Supersport Champions, the Gloucester-based Smiths Racing Triumph Team were in action at round nine of the World Supersport Championship at Silverstone yesterday but sadly for both Glen Richards and Billy McConnell, they couldn't manage to add to their previous points scoring successes.

Competing as wild cards on the world stage for a second time this year aboard the brand new Triumph Daytona 675R machines, both 39-year-old Richards and 26-year-old fellow Australian McConnell were unable to make an impression on the points but it proved to be a valuable three days for the team as they look towards the second half of their British Championship campaign.

It was Richards who had the strongest weekend for the team and having qualified in a solid 21st place, he found himself part of a seven rider group battling for 12th place. Still recovering from the shoulder injuries sustained in a crash at Knockhill in June, Richards was able to lap quicker than he had done throughout qualifying although he just missed out on scoring World Championship points when he finished the race in 17th place.

For team-mate McConnell it wasn't as productive a weekend as he looked to make the most of the track time available over the three days. A persistent misfire meant he missed the entire second free practice session as well as the opening qualifying session and it left him very much on the back foot. However, after making it back on track for the final qualifying session, he posted the 32nd quickest lap to make it onto the grid for the 16-lap race and, lapping over a second and a half quicker than he had done all weekend, he was able to move through the field to take a hard-earned 22nd place.

Glen Richards: "Obviously I'd have liked to have finished higher up than 17th but I really enjoyed the battle out there and given we were up against it with no traction control and the like, it was as good a result as we could hope for. We learnt an awful lot about the bike this weekend and have a good set-up now for the British round here in a few weeks time and the fact I lapped quicker than I did on the 2012 bike shows how much progress we've made. The shoulder's not quite 100% but it's not far off now and I'm really looking forward to the next few races."

Billy McConnell: "It's been a frustrating weekend and certainly not the one we hoped for but it's better that the problems happened here rather than on a British Championship weekend! Looking at the positives, Glen went quicker than on the old bike so it shows that the hard work everyone's been putting in has been in the right direction and it was good to have a trouble free race. It's always good to get a full World Championship race under your belt and I made some good progress so roll on Oulton Park."

Rebecca Smith, Team Manager: "With considerably more track time than we usually get, we came with the objective of testing and developing the bike more, particularly as Silverstone wasn't one of our strongest circuits in 2012. We ran BSB control fuel so that, combined with the other bikes on the grid having traction control, meant it was hard work and the problems with Billy's bike meant it was an even bigger ask. We changed everything on the bike to try and get to the bottom of it, eventually tracing the problem to a virus in the laptop so once we'd changed the mapping on Billy's bike, he was good to go again.

"The results didn't reflect the hard work everyone had put in and with the bikes being at a disadvantage to the World Championship-specification machines, we're happy with how well Glen and Billy rode. It was a tougher weekend than anticipated but we achieved our aim and the boys had fun, particularly Glen in the race. We know there's still some more work to be done but we're confident that we'll be a lot closer to the front at the next British Championship round and are all looking forward to a strong second half of the season."

World Supersport Championship race (16 laps)1 Kenan Sofuoglu (Kawasaki)2 Sam Lowes (Yamaha)3 Fabien Foret (Kawasaki)4 Kev Coghlan (Kawasaki)5 Christian Iddon (MV Agusta)6 Roberto Rolfo (MV Agusta)17 Glen Richards (Smiths Triumph)22 Billy McConnell (Smiths Triumph)