Hornchurch racer Thompson endures tricky weekend in fourth round at Knockhill

Bobby Thompson in action at Knockhill (Pic: Jakob Ebrey/Motorsport) (Image: Archant)

Despite lapping within a second of pole position, the highly competitive nature of the field meant that Thompson had to settle for 20th on the grid, leaving him with work to do on race day on a circuit where overtaking can be notoriously difficult.

Suffering a tough start to the race having slipped back down to 23rd, the youngster recovered well despite struggling for front end grip and fought his way up to 18th by the finish.

Straight line speed would prove to be an issue, but Thompson pushed hard in the second race to fight his way through to 16th place at the finish, picking up places with a number of opportunistic moves.

However, he would then be excluded from the results for a technical infringement which meant he would start race three from the back of the grid.

Having avoided a multi-car accident that forced the final race to be red-flagged, the Hornchurch racer would end the restarted race in 19th and is now looking at a return to his early season form when the series heads to Thruxton for round five next month.

Bobby Thompson said: “We’ve had a challenging time as we struggled with straight line speed this weekend and it was an uphill battle in the races.

“I pushed hard to try and move forwards in the first two races and had some luck on my side to make up places as other had issues.

“We got close to the points in race two before the exclusion, which put us on the back foot again.”

Thompson added:“From the back in race three it was always going to be difficult and I managed to avoid the incident ahead which was the big plus as we could have picked up some real damage in that one.

“We have a few weeks now to regroup ahead of Thruxton.”

Thompson will be keen to put in a strong performance in the next round of the competition.