Buxton's Chris Kent totally dominant at season-ender

The event, which took place at the Lydden Hill race circuit near Dover. was a first for Kent.

The meeting schedule meant that his first view of the track from a motorbike was in a damp Saturday morning qualifying session.

Carefully building his pace over the laps gave Kent second place on the grid, albeit a full second behind a more experienced rival.

Heat 1 got underway in wet conditions and with the MZ’s sharing a grid with the Production 400 class, things got interesting from the off.

The first bend saw a variety of lines from other riders, but Kent was able to pick his way through and gap the other MZ racers early on.

A steady approach and smooth riding paid off for him to take victory by three seconds and give him pole position for Heat 2.

Another good start and clever overtakes once again gave the Buxton man a chance to settle in to a rhythm without having to fend off leadership challenges and again finished with almost a four second advantage.

Heat 3 on Sunday morning was once again wet but this time Kent had to deal with a rival in the opening laps before stretching a commanding lead of eight seconds to take victory.

The Final Race of the weekend saw the grid positions determined by the addition of all the heat times so Kent was again on pole position.

Once again he got the hole-shot and opened a 2 second gap on a drying track until lap 6 when back-markers in the other class contrived to slow him down.

By lap 7 he had lost the lead but retook it with an audacious overtake of 2 riders into the hairpin.

The last 2 laps were then the fastest that our local rider had put in all weekend to hold off a hard charging rival. This gave him the overall win by 0.1s

Afterwards Kent said: “I’m happy that’s over! Racing in the wet is always nerve-racking and when it starts to dry the grip levels change so it’s difficult to know how hard to push.

“Nevertheless I’m really happy to come here on my first visit and win all the heats and the final. It was a good weekend’s work to close the season.”