ANDOVER'S Jake Archer picked up 16 championship points with two eighth place finishes at Thruxton last weekend.

Archer was back on track after missing the racing at Snetterton with tonsillitis.

The Kalex Moto2 rider made a sound start to last weekend’s racing finishing just outside the 1:20 mark in FP1 before reducing his lap time to 1:19.580 in FP2.

The 30 minute qualifying session took place on Saturday morning. Archer made three laps and was beginning to build up speed when he high-sided.

He managed to save it and came into the pits after taking a knock just to check himself and the bike were all ok.

With 20 minutes left he returned to the circuit, chipping away at his lap time.

A 1:21.4 dropped to 1:20.471 before a final stop after ten laps.

Archer then attacked the final stint putting in six laps to finish with a best 1:19.561 and 9th in the British GP2 class.

The 12-lap Sprint Race took place under a cloudy Hampshire sky.

Archer lost a place on the opening lap but was closing in on Dutch rider De Vries from the third lap.

The two battled throughout the 12 laps with Archer crossing the line in 8th position in the GP2 class just 0.097 seconds behind his rival.

After a positive warm up in which Archer found more pace, the Sunday race was 18 laps of the Thruxton track.

He was running ninth in the opening laps before the safety car came out and the riders bunched up again.

After the safety car pulled in at the end of lap seven Archer initially lost ground to De Vries the GP2 rider just ahead of him.

In the second half of the race Archer managed to lap low 1:20 and high 1:19s and closed in on De Vries passing him with five laps remaining.

Archer went on to cross the line for his second eighth place finish of the weekend.

Jake Archer said: “In race one I struggled a bit with the set up so for the warm up on Sunday we made some adjustments. It seemed to work so we stuck with them for the second race.

"Initially I didn’t have the pace I would have liked but as the race went on I became more confident with the bike. Thank you to all my sponsors and to everyone from Andover who came to support me this weekend.”