Craig Fitzpatrick made a solid start to his 2009 British Supersport Championship campaign by claiming seventh place in the opening race of the season. The current British Supersport Cup Champion experienced a trying weekend, after poor weather and an engine failure hampered his progress at the Brands Hatch event.

Free practice on Friday was less than ideal, as the damp weather hampered attempts to set up the BLDS Couriers Close Print Yamaha R6. Fitzpatrick posted some impressive times leaving him 3rd overall in the first session. Fitzpatrick chose to sit out the second due to poor weather.

The weather again played it's part on Saturday with yet more rain affected sessions. The third of the free practice sessions was dry, which gave Fitzpatrick the chance to test the bike over full race distance. The first of the qualifying sessions was run amongst intermittent showers. As the circuit began to dry out towards the conclusion of the session, Fitzpatrick put on an intermediate rear tyre and posted the 2nd quickest time of the session.

Sunday's solitary qualifying session saw Fitzpatrick slip from pole position back to 8th after suffering an engine failure. After 24 laps, the Yamaha R6 motor blew, on the entry to Clearways making him crash out of the session. With a dry track, the previous day's times were quickly bettered, and having been well in contention, Fitzpatrick's crash put an end to his charge.

A damp morning warm-up session was all the team had to make sure the bike was back in order. The damage to his number 1 engine was too severe to repair which left him with no choice but to run his number 2.

Fitzpatrick got off to a bad start in the race due to a rider having a jump start behind him pushing him off line and get swamped by the field going into Paddock Hill bend. Having dropped to 18th place on the first lap, Fitzpatrick gave himself a mountain to climb. He quickly settled into his rhythm and began about mounting a charge. Over the first eleven laps, Fitzpatrick made up ten places as he sought to recover his early loses, and by two-thirds race distance he was running seventh. As the laps counted down, Fitzpatrick continued to reel in the sixth place man. Unfortunately, all the early work had taken the best out of his rear tyre and he just didn't have enough pace to claim any more points. After a difficult pre season, and a less than perfect weekend, Fitzpatrick can look back on a seventh place finish as a good result.

Fitzpatrick was happy with the weekend saying "To be honest 7th is alright with what the weekend has chucked at as bad weather,engine failure and a crash with only one bike.

We also so have 3 new team members these weekend and it has worked really really well !I would like to say a big thanks to all my team and sponsors for all the help and support"

Fitzpatrick's next outing will be at round 2, held at Oulton park in Cheshire, in just under three weeks time

Championship Standings:

1. Billy McConnell
2. Steve Plater
3. Dan Linfoot
4. Hudson Kennaugh
5. Lee Johnston

7. Craig Fitzpatrick