INGLETON motorcyclist Harley Rushton extended his championship lead after a successful weekend at the Classic Festival of Motorcycling at Donnington Park in Leicestershire.

A weekend of mixed weather conditions provided some interesting and exiting racing across three days of action.

Qualifying on Friday saw Harley take pole position aboard his 350 Honda twin. Harley followed this up with a 3rd place qualifying aboard his 500 Manx Norton. Harley also qualified 4th place for the 500 ACU race and 8th in the Wheatcroft King of Classics open race.

Harley started off the weekend with a win in the first 350 twins race aboard his Craven Honda. The second 350 race of the weekend was held in torrential wet conditions and a poor tyre choice left Harley struggling to a 5th place finish. Sunday and the final race day brought with it sunshine and great conditions for racing. Harley took to further class victories and an outright win in the final race after a great race long battle at the front. Harley was over the moon with this result, getting within 0.1 seconds of the lap record.

On the 500 Craven Manx Norton Harley took a 4th place in race one followed by a 7th place in the wet tricky conditions on Saturday. Sunday morning's first race saw Harley suffer a mechanical problem while running in 4th place meaning he had a DNF. After fixing the problem, Harley managed to secure a 5th place in the final race of the day while battling against teammate Mike Cooper.

In the ACU race Harley got a good start getting away with the race leaders, unfortunately not being able to keep this pace at the front meant he had to settle for a 4th place finish. This was followed by a strong showing in the Wheatcroft Trophy race where Harley finished as he qualified in 8th place. This was a great result finishing in front of a lot more powerful bikes than his Manx Norton 500.

Overall he had a good weekend with some strong results but he feels there is room for improvement to get to the front of the 500 races.

He said: "This weekend was really enjoyable as the classic racing festival at Donington always is. The results in the 350 Honda were great, we had really good pace and were setting good lap times in the final race of the weekend. In the 500 races I didn't just have speed to stay with the leading three throughout the race."