Castlerock's Marty Nutt was in the points once more on Bank Holiday Monday when he finished 12th at Oulton Park in round 3 of the Fuchs-Silkolene British Supersport Championship. The NuttTravel.Com/Dawn/T&G Racing rider battled through the pack from a lowly qualifying position and overcame some treacherous conditions to record his second top twelve finish of the season and move back up to 16th place overall in the Championship table.
Sixth and twelth in Saturday's free practice sessions was a promising start to the weekend and even though he was shuffled back to 14th after Sunday's first qualifying session, hopes were high of getting back into the top twelve later in the day. However, colder temperatures and a busy track meant it was difficult for riders to improve on their times and Marty couldn't better, or replicate his times from earlier in the afternoon, an engine problem also meaning he was experiencing a mysterious lack of power. A small group of riders did manage to go faster and Marty found himself in a slightly disappointing 19th place at the end of the two qualifying sessions thus lining up for the race on the fifth row of the grid.

The weather was still cool for Monday's race and, when the Supersport riders came to the line, a number of ominous black clouds were looming overhead. Sure enough, just after the warm up lap started, the rain began to fall and although initially just a few spots, it soon began to fall heavier and the race was rightly delayed. When it did get underway, full wet tyres were the order of the day for the shortened 12-lap race and, with a good start, Marty was already up to 14th by the end of lap 2. Conditions were extremely slippy and staying upright was in itself a major task but, whilst others around him were sliding off in to the scenery, Marty kept a cool head and was slowly but surely, moving up the leaderboard. He was up to 11th on lap 5 when the safety car was deployed to allow debris to be cleared off the track and when it pulled in three laps later, he moved up to 10th. On the penultimate lap he was up 9th and looking extremely good for his first top ten finish of the year but on the final circuit he firstly got overtaken at the chicane and then got 'mugged' at the final corner to be shuffled back to 12th.
Speaking afterwards, Marty commented: "I've got mixed feelings after today's race because although I'm happy with 12th after all the problems I had in qualifying, I've got an overall feeling of disappointment because of what happened on the final lap. If I was standing here now with 9th place to my name, I'd have been well happy but to get mugged on the last lap is hard to take! Qualifying was nothing short of a disaster as the bike wasn't making any power at all for some reason so I didn't really have much hope of getting in to the points today but the rain made it more of a level playing field in the race and I just kept my head and tried to stay as smooth as I possibly could. Conditions were really tricky and it was so hard to stop going in to the corners, it felt like I was going to run on all the time but I concentrated real hard and when I was up ninth it felt like I'd pulled a result out of the bag. On the last lap though, Jenny (Tinmouth) got me at Knickerbrook and although I'd been strong at Druids all race, the one time I was slightly off was on the final lap and not only did it mean I couldn't have a go back past Jenny, it also allowed the two riders behind me to dive by at the final corner! On the plus side, we've come away with some more points again and have two finishes from two starts so we'll work hard between now and the next round to make sure the bike's working at 100% and we can get back in to the top ten."
Marty now has a three-week break before the next of the British Supersport Championship with round 4 taking place at Cadwell Park, May 21-23.