Ayres rock solid at Donington

On the third lap of qualifying his carburetor malfunctioned which left him on the gravel and 17th out of 21 cars.

The race got off to a good start and Ayres made it up to ninth place by the start of the second lap, but an incident between two other racers at the start of the lap meant the race was red-flagged and the field had to line up in our original positions for the restart.

Ayresquickly moved his way back up the pack and into the top ten but during lap two Mark Townsend, a friend of Ayres, rolled his car. Luckily he got out unhurt.

On the last lap Ayres was ninth and on the last corner he passed two more cars, taking him up to seventh place, only 0.4 of a second off sixth and fifth.

Ayres said: “If there had been another lap I would have easily passed them and likely to have had a top-five finish.”

The race was won by Pip Hammond who went second in the championship, one point ahead of Ayres in third. Matt Rozier leads the table.