Team ILR's Nadieh Schoots came away from her debut at Thruxton well pleased with her weekend's efforts as the Pirelli National Superstock 1000cc Championship moves into the second half of the season.

The seventh round of the series saw the young Dutch girl register a race finish for the second meeting on the trot with a confident ride.

Nadieh was 37th in Friday’s free practice session and just outside the qualifying benchmark for the race, but both she and team owner Ian Lougher were confident there was more to come.

Using the sizeable knowledge the team has for settings for the superstock Kawasaki, Nadieh went over three seconds quicker in first qualifying to comfortably qualify for Sunday’s race.

In the second session the next day, Nadieh managed to knock almost a second and a half off her fastest time and took her place on the grid in 38th place for Sunday's 16-lap race.

An incident in the earlier Superbike race, meant the Superstock 1000 race was reduced from 16 laps to 13 and as the race got underway in much cooler conditions Nadieh held her position as the field streamed round the ultra fast circuit on the opening lap.

By the end of the lap, Nadieh had gained a place and as the race wore on she found herself up to 35th and closing on the riders in front. But with the race being reduced, she ran out of laps to make any further impact and she had to settle for 35th place, but nevertheless delighted with her race.

Team ILR owner/manager Ian Lougher:

''Nadieh had a good enough weekend and did a decent lap time in practice. She rode a solid race and brought the Team ILR ZX-10 home for a second successive finish and can now look forward to building on this at the next round at Brands.''

Nadieh Schoots:

“It was my first time at Thruxton and I love the circuit, it's my favourite in the UK so far. It's so fast and I had a smile on my face every lap!

I made a lot of progress this weekend and felt I have closed the gap to the riders in front of me and I'm happy with another race finish, and my fastest weekend so far.

I'll be looking to improve even further! 

A big thank-you to my team."

While Schoots was enjoying arguably her best meeting of the year so far, over on the other side of the Team ILR awning Sandown Racing's Carl Phillips was experiencing his most challenging event so far of 2016.

The Pirelli National Superstock 600 Championship leader is working closely with Team ILR this season and he arrived at the Hampshire circuit justifiably confident of a good result.

However his problems started from the first qualifying session when, with five minutes of the session remaining, his No.1 engine let go in a big way leaving his team of Willy, Neil and Robbie with a big task on their hands. But as always they rose to the challenge and worked brilliantly to have the ZX-6 spare engine in, dynoed and ready for Q2. With a few suspension changes also in place, Carl finished in 9th with a third row start for the race.

As Sunday's race got underway Carl quickly settled into a good rhythm and was comfortable with the race pace during the hectic opening laps in which he climbed to fourth with the leaders well within striking distance.

However, he got pushed wide at the final chicane and in doing so had to take to the kerbs, across and over the rumble strips, and lost 6 places.

He regrouped and fought his way back up to 8th position, but this is where his troubles really started with his bike starting to lack revs and hold back on the straights.

Somehow he was able to hold onto 10th and limped across the line a bit dejected and fortunate to finish the race.

But finish he did, to pick up more championship points, and with Jordan Weaving winning the race to close the gap slightly at the top of the championship, they're points that could prove crucial at the end of the season.

Ian Lougher:

"The fact he was not that thrilled with his grid position is a measure of how well Carl has been riding this season, but he was only 0.4 seconds off pole and had a good potential race pace heading into Sunday.

Although on paper it looks a bad result for him, this is the first time all season he has finished outside the top four, and in my mind this was a weekend of what champions are made of.

We had a fair number of problems over the course of the meeting, through no-one's fault, but Carl kept his chin up and brought it home in the best position he could.

I think he will look back on this meeting and see that this is where he dug deep, and even when the bike was only performing at about 80% on the last couple of laps he still managed to only lose 2 positions and still has a 29 point lead in the championship."

Carl Phillips: 

"Tenth place was the best I could manage, it was a very frustrating weekend to say the least.

The team are exhausted with the effort they put in trying to get the bike competitive, and I have under two weeks now to get things back on course.

I must thank everyone, the team, sponsors and anyone who helped in any way."