Stevens and Charlwood rally with two second-place finishes

Ricky Stevens and Ryan Charlwood. Picture: JCM Motorsports Photography

The defending champions secured two runners-up finishes in round four of the competition at Snetterton last weekend.

Portsmouth-based driver Stevens was almost forced to pull out of the meeting after injuring his foot.

The duo had suffered technical woes with their vehicle in round three at Knockhill last month.

It prompted them to change their entire suspension system at the Norfolk circuit and they reaped the rewards with two seconds.

Stevens said: ‘I hurt my foot and to facilitate a speedy recovery, I couldn’t put any weight on it.

‘We had to move the gear levers to my handlebars.

‘It was a bit tricky because I’m not used to changing gears with my hand.

‘It felt like everything was stacked up against us going into this round.

‘I’m relatively happy to have walked away with two second-place finishes and we almost matched our quickest lap time.

‘It felt like there was more in the bike.

‘At Knockhill, it felt like I couldn’t do more as we were at the maximum, so I’m happy we changed the suspension.’

Having qualified in second on the grid for the first race, Stevens and Charlwood stayed in the same spot and had play bridesmaid to championship leaders Tim and Tristan Reeves.

With new regulations brought in this year, the top 10 finishers of race one lined up in reverse order for the second affair.

It subsequently meant Stevens and Charlwood started from grid nine and had to fight their way through the pack to give chase to the Reeves brothers.

The defending champions struggled to find their rhythm in the early stages.

However, four laps from home Stevens and Charlwood began to cut through the field.

Despite picking off the majority of their opponents, they could not get past the Reeves’.

Stevens admitted he was not happy with his performance in race two.

‘I felt race one was the better race out of the two for us,’ he added.

‘We made a few changes and I felt it didn’t go as well in the second race.

‘I lost my confidence, but that could be because we had to get through the grid.’