A TALENTED young Test Valley motorcycle rider has secured a lucrative sponsorship deal – just days after his 16th birthday.

Jake Archer, from Stockbridge, recently signed a sponsorship deal with crane agency City Lifting.

And the teenager will be hoping to make another big impact in the Motostar British Championships as he returns for his second season.

Archer will ride a FTR KTM in the competition, a support series of British Superbike racing.

The series evolved from the old British 125cc championship, which has seen the likes of Casey Stoner, Sam Lowes and Alex Lowes go on to race at world championship level.

British Superbike is watched by more than 10 million people on TV or track-side every year.

In 2015 Jake Archer scored 162 points for RS Racing and stood on the second step of the podium at a memorable race at Oulton Park.

Of his podium finish Archer said, “It was just fantastic. A bit overwhelming really, after losing my grandad just before.

“That one was for him.”

Archer narrowly missed out on further podium positions after finishing fourth at Cadwell Park, Assen and Silverstone on his way to end a successful first year in the class.

The season had started slowly for Jake who experienced some gearbox problems and had a couple of crashes in the early rounds.

However by the halfway stage he had found his feet and only failed to score points in one of the last eleven races.

Although the name has changed to Team City Lifting, the very experienced Ryan Saxelby remains an important figure within the set-up.

Archer said: “Ryan is fantastic, he knows the bike inside out as well as the tracks and we also get a lot of help from Kyle Ryde.

“We have followed Kyle Ryde footsteps with my career, if we can keep following we won’t be doing badly.

“He’s going to be in World Supersport this year.”

When asked what he hoped to achieve in the 2016 season Archer responded: “This year I hope to be challenging for the title and would love to do a wildcard at Silverstone in the Moto3 event of MotoGP, if we can raise the funds.”

The official testing programme begins at the end of March 2016.

The championship starts at Donington Park on the 4-6 April 2016.