Solid top ten finishes at Donington for Marty Nutt

And it proved to be another good meeting with Marty taking sixth and ninth in the two races.

After qualifying in a solid sixth place, a sluggish start to Saturday afternoon’s opening 10-lap race saw Marty drop back to ninth but he was quickly up to sixth and closing in on the group ahead of him when the safety car came out for a period of three laps due to a crash.

That allowed the field to bunch up and for the remaining five laps it was nip and tuck all the way. However, with the leading group matching each other’s lap times, positions remained unchanged and so Marty took the chequered flag in sixth place.

StilL experiencing the clutch problems that had plagued him at Cadwell Park, Sunday’s 8-lap encounter saw Marty back down in 13th at the end of the first lap but two laps later, he was inside the top ten and advancing forward. Lapping a second a lap quicker than some of the riders in front of him,

Marty closed the gap but, try as he might, he was unable to overtake any more riders and so crossed the line in ninth place. Nevertheless, the two races saw him pick up 17 points for the weekend and maintain his 100 percent record of finishing inside the top ten in all of his completed races.

Speaking afterwards, a pleased Marty said: “After being out for so long with injury, these last few rounds have all been about dialling myself back in and not doing anything stupid so to get two more strong finishes is really pleasing.

“The first race was very much a case of ‘steady away’ and having seen a few boys go down the last thing I wanted was to suffer a similar fate so I just kept it safe and stayed out of trouble. The pace of the top 7-8 riders is very similar so it’s hard to make a move but I was happy with sixth and it got the weekend off to a good start.”

The final round of the Ducati 848 Challenge takes place at Silverstone, Northants on September 28-30.