THE European round of the World Superbikes was contested for the second time at Brands Hatch with Wickhamford teenager Simon Andrews making a superb return to the European Superstock following his fall in San Marino five weeks ago.

The event was more reminiscent of the Italian rounds with the heat and the humidity rather than a British event and tested the riders' fitness and took its toll on the equipment in every session.

Friday's qualifying started well with the Vale rider setting a hot pace and by the end of the second session Simon was ninth position.

With the arrival of Saturday and the expectations of producing even faster lap times final changes were made, the gearing was fine-tuned and after eight laps of the last qualifying session a technical fault appeared that could not be rectified within the remaining time. Unfortunately the team was forced to sit out the last session and watch Simon drop to 19th on the leader board.

Scheduled as the first race of the day on the Sunday and in front of a crowd in excess of 125,000, Simon made one of his best starts this season on his Fireblade. As the riders raced towards the first bend fairing bounced off fairing, handlebars locked and after three laps Simon had moved into 17th.

As the race unfolded the leaders touched, resulting in both riders going down in a nasty crash, out came the red flags and the race was stopped.

The SBK officials rescheduled the Superstock to a twelve-lap race to be run as the last race of the day. Once again Simon pushed hard from the start and moved up through the field, passing rider after rider with his late braking and then sliding his Fireblade sideways into the corners.

With three laps to go Simon was 11th and taking seven tenths of a second out of the next pack when the red flags came out once again, this time there was no restart. The race was declared completed three laps short and the results were worked out on corrected time, which placed Simon 14th.

The team is back in action at Thruxton on August 11.