Hipwell takes 14th at Brands Hatch in Brit Supersport race

Hipwell and his rivals had just one free practice session on the Saturday morning, followed by one qualifying session in the afternoon.

In cloudy but dry conditions Hipwell put the Globalnet Triumph on the grid in 17th for Sunday morning’s 10-lap sprint.

He didn’t get off to a good first lap and although he moved up and down a couple of places, 17th is where he finished.

Hipwell’s fastest lap of the race would see him drop to 20th on the grid for Sunday afternoon’s main race.

The CDH Racing man made a better start on Sunday afternoon, passing three riders on the first lap to move into 17th.

On the eighth lap he was up into 14th, and having overtaken the Kawasaki of Coates he was 13th, when lap twelve saw near disaster.

As he entered the fast uphill left hand Surtees bend he nearly lost control of the Globalnet Triumph but managed to desperately hang on.

Unfortunately for Hipwell this pushed him back to 16th place, half a second behind the group of three in front of him.

On lap 13 he regrouped and caught then overtook the Triumph of Rob Guiver behind the Kawasaki of Coates.

The next two laps saw Hipwell maintain this 15th position and with Coates overtaking the Yamaha of Estment he was six hundreths of a second behind the same rider.

As the last lap started Hipwell was the third rider in this group of four covered by half a second and he managed to get past Estment to cross the finishing line in 14th place, less than a tenth of a second behind Coates.