Australian privateer Ant West produced a series of consistent lap times to claim ninth place in today’s 250cc British Motorcycle Grand Prix at Donington Park.

West completed the 27-lap race in a time of 42-minutes 47.896-seconds on a non-factory Kiefer-BOS Racing Aprilia. He finished 31.575-seconds behind Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo, who won the ninth round of the 250cc world championship on a works Fortuna Aprilia.

During the race West clocked a best lap time of 1-minute 34.314-secs around the 4km track. He rode a total of 19 laps under 1-minute 35-seconds.

The result by West secured him seven world championship points and he retained 10th position in the series with an overall tally of 49.
West qualified 12th for the race at Donington Park. In today’s pre-race warm-up he was fastest in wet conditions. However, the track was dry for the race.

The 24-year-old was 11th after the opening lap and was still in the same position on lap 24. In the final three laps he improved to ninth after Japan’s Shuhei Aoyama (Repsol Honda) and Italian Marco Simoncelli (Metis Gilera) both crashed, before rejoining the race.

West has now finished in the top 10 in six of the past seven rounds of the championship. The next round is at the Sachsenring in Germany on July 16.

ANT WEST QUOTES: "When it was wet for the warm-up I thought I might be a chance for the podium, but then the sun came out and it was dry for the race. In the first few laps I ran wide on the entry to a chicane and lost some time. Then I followed (Sylvain) Guintoli for the rest of the race. I rode as hard as I could, but he had a small gap and I couldn’t get close enough to make a pass. Near the end I saw (Shuhei) Aoyama and (Marco) Simoncelli in the gravel. We used the same engine in the race that I ran on Friday. It had done a lot of miles, but we had to switch back to it because of problems with the new engine we used yesterday. There was some vibration from mid-race onwards, but the engine held together. We’ve had three races the last three weekends and I enjoyed that – I don’t mind racing every weekend. The next race at the Sachsenring in a couple of weeks could be good for us because it’s a tight track and the factory bikes won’t have such a big advantage as at some other places we race.”