Photo: Kerry Rawson
Last weekend Luke Hopkins was competing in the sixth round of the Hel Performance Motostar British Standard class championship at Brands Hatch.
There were two free practice sessions on the Friday. Hopkins managed to drop his lap time by almost a second between the two sessions. Despite FP2 ending early when Hopkins high-sided coming out of Graham Hill bend onto the Cooper Straight, he finished the session fourth quickest in the standard class.
The Moto3 riders had an early start on Saturday with qualifying taking place at 9am. There had been heavy overnight rain meaning they all started on wet tyres. As the thirty minute session went into the final ten minutes some riders came in to switch to dry tyres. However, the track was still quite damp in at the back of the circuit. Hopkins opted for safety and stayed on wets qualifying 8th.
After a long wait for the first race of the weekend on Saturday afternoon it had to be postponed following a deluge of rain.
The result was the riders would compete in two races on the Sunday. The first was the 14 lap feature race mid-afternoon. Hopkins made a positive get-away from the start line maintaining position at the end of the first lap. He was involved in a battle with Shane Faber in the opening laps and then later with Ross Turner. Turner and Hopkins traded places on numerous occasions before Hopkins crossed the finish line in 8th position.
Race two had been rescheduled from yesterday and added as the final event on Sunday. The heavy downpour that had been forecast for the afternoon fortunately never materialised. However, for Hopkins the race was over before it began when he had a technical issue on the start which forced him to pull off the grid and retire before the race began.
Luke Hopkins said,” Race two was clearly disappointing and not the way we wanted to end the weekend. However, I don’t want to forget that the first race was awesome as I was involved in a battle throughout the race and scored eight points. “