SPLITLATH Redmond riders John Laverty and Florian Marino battled through the pain as they tackled this weekend’s MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship triple-header.

As the season reached the half-way point at Oulton Park, both riders were forced to fight through the pain barrier after crashing out in separate incidents on Friday.

Marino crashed at Shell and injured his ankle during Friday’s first free practice session, while team-mate Laverty suffered a similar fate during the afternoon session, falling at the same place and chipping a bone in his thumb.

But both were determined to ride in all three races at the Cheshire circuit, and although Marino initially looked set to pull out of Saturday’s race, he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to give it a go.

Laverty started from 27th on the grid while Marino lined-up 30th, and both got good starts making up a handful of places each in the opening laps. However it soon proved too much for Laverty whose thumb became painful and started to swell, and he decided to pull in and rest it so he could try and race on Sunday.

Marino kept a cool head and pushed on, making his way up to 18th with two laps to go and on the penultimate lap made a pass on Aaron Zanotti to cross the line 17th.

Laverty was back on board for Sunday’s races, starting from 29th for the first one of the day and just two spots behind Marino in 27th. Marino made one of his trademark quick getaways and was up to 22 by the end of the first lap, and after making up a few more places crossed the line 19th at the flag.

However Laverty was again forced to retire, this time with a technical problem.

For Race Three Marino started from 23rd with Laverty 24th. By now both were tired and in a lot of pain but they kept their heads down and pushed on to finally finish 21st and 23rd respectively.

“It’s been a hard weekend,” said Laverty. “The crash on Friday obviously shook me up a bit because it’s the first one I’ve had since I returned to racing, and doing it here at Oulton again was a bit strange.

“My thumb was very painful yesterday and still caused trouble today but I just had to ride around it as best I could. It’s a bit disappointing that I couldn’t finish all three races as a thank you to the team who have worked so hard this weekend.”

Marino added: “My ankle was very painful but I was determined to ride this weekend. I’ve had some treatment and tried to work around it. I am happy that I was able to finish all races and get two top 20 positions.”

Team co-owner John Dimbylow praised his riders’ efforts at fighting through the pain. “It’s been a busy weekend, and sadly both boys crashed on Friday.

John suffered a bad injury to his hand while Florian severely bruised his leg – it swelled up badly and he could hardly get his boot on. But both lads soldiered on and raced despite being in severe pain.

“It’s a big shame because great progress was made at Knockhill but that’s racing. When you are down things tend to happen like this but what sorts the men out from the boys are those that keep on, and we will keep on fighting.

We’ve got a great team, great bikes, great riders – we’ve just got to crack on, shrug it off and get on with the next round.”

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