Tom Booth-Amos clinches season best result at his home round. Ondrej Vostatek misses out on points.

PTR Triumph’s Tom Booth-Amos delivered his best result of the year so far with a superb seventh place finish in today’s FIM Supersport Championship race one at Donington Park.

Booth-Amos headed up the third round of the grid in P7 for the start of the 18-lap and was immediately in the fight with the top group when, at the halfway point of the race, he was pushed wide and received a long lap penalty for ‘shortcut at turn 9 without losing 1 second’.  The British rider duly completed the long lap penalty which lost him time but he quickly recovered to cross the line in seventh position.

Tom Booth-Amos: “Overall a solid result, the best of the season but I unfortunately got a long lap penalty in the middle of the race and it put me on the back foot so I had to dig in and do my best to get back to where we should be.  I did a good lap time and I start fourth tomorrow and hopefully no long lap tomorrow and I can try and put it on the box for the team because they’ve been working really hard.”

ollowing his enormous high side in Tissot Superpole yesterday, teammate Ondrej Vostatek was still feeling the effects of the high-speed crash in today’s race one.  Despite that the Czech youngster finished no lower than his start position of P17.

Ondrej Vostatek: “After that crash in Superpole I still feel some pain.  We had some problems with turning in the race but I’m just 1 second behind the points so tomorrow is for us a motivation to do more.”

PTR Triumph Team Manager Simon Buckmaster: “Our best result of the season.  Tom’s long lap penalty lost 3 seconds which took us out of the battle for fourth or fifth.  Fourth fastest lap time so fourth on the grid tomorrow, so we are in a good place.  We are going to look at small improvements we need to make but it’s another good step forward.  We are confident tomorrow to improve on that result and keep going as the season progresses in a really positive direction. I want to thank the team for everything they are doing for that.  Huge crash for Ondrej yesterday and with a big crash like that you lose momentum so it takes the warm up session to get back into it and settle down with a more or less complete new bike. He is just outside the points, he is battling with good riders but it’s such a strong, tough championship with a huge depth of field.  I’ve chatted to him about taking the positives and we can realistically say, with some small improvements we will be back in the points with him. Looking forward to tomorrow and hope we make a good race for all the British fans.”

Fantastic fifth for Tom Booth-Amos in Race Two. A tough day for Ondrej Vostatek.

PTR Triumph’s Tom Booth-Amos went two better in today’s FIM Supersport World Championship race two with a fantastic fifth place finish in the shortened to twelve lap race in front of the home fans at Donington Park.

The scheduled 18-lap race was red-flagged after a multi rider crash early in the race and was quickly restarted with original grid positions.  Booth-Amos got another great start from the second row of the grid and the contest with Valentin Debise was ignited with multiple passes by both riders.

The battle between Booth-Amos and the French rider for P5 was arguably the most exciting of the whole race and it was ultimately the British rider who came out on top to make this his best WorldSSP result to date.

Tom Booth Amos: “Overall pretty happy but also a little disappointed. I felt like I had better pace towards the end of the race and the guys in front of me, I could see myself catching Manzi but Debise just wouldn’t let me past him.  Fair race and it’s our best result of the season and I can’t thank the boys enough for all their hard work because they’ve put a lot of work in to get to where we are after where we have been the last couple of races.  Thanks to everybody and let’s hope we continue this moving forward.”

Teammate Ondrej Vostatek’s fortunes were not so good in the second race of the weekend.  The Czech rider only just missed scoring points in race one but he wasn’t able to make that step today with a P20 finish.

Ondrej Vostatek: “Today wasn’t my day.  I lost confidence in the first start when I had the SC0 tyre and I was sliding immediately in the warm up lap.  Then the red flag.  The second start we had SCX tyre and it was better but I had brake fade and the rear felt wrong into the left handers.  I’m disappointed because after Free Practice we were P8 and I know I am capable of a much better result.”

PTR Triumph Team Manager Simon Buckmaster: “Really good ride by Tom.  After the red flag Tom rode a really good race, our best result this year, Triumph’s best result this year and Tom’s best result ever. From where we were at the start of the season when things didn’t run for us, collectively as a team we made some mistakes, it’s really good to come back like this. Now we go to Most in a really confident way.  Today it just didn’t happen for Ondrej. We need to discuss with him and his crew chief what he felt the issue was but it’s his home round next week so we need to get everything to be as good as possible for Ondrej and keep working with him.  Congratulations to Tom and the whole team, not just his side of the team, for continuing to work and getting us back to where we should be.”