CHARLIE Nesbitt managed to come back from a hailstorm which foiled his qualification plans to finish 14th in his second Moto2 Junior World Cup race at Le Mans in France.

The weather made life difficult for all the riders at the Le Mans circuit, with no dry track time before the race.

During the first qualifying practice, Swindon’s Nesbitt concentrated on learning a new track rather than pushing for a good time because of the rain and he finished the session in 23rd.

In the second qualifying period, Nesbitt waited until the final 10 minutes before looking to try and push up the grid, however, there was a hailstorm which meant Nesbitt lost his chance to put in that decent lap time, meaning he qualified down in 29th position.

Despite the disappointment, Nesbitt set about immediately trying to improve the situation during the warm-up on race day. His lap time of 1min 52.194secs, again in wet conditions, placed him sixth quickest overall.

Once the race got under way, the Monlau Engineering rider was immediately on the pace. He quickly made up seven places in the opening laps before fighting a battle with three other riders where they regularly swapped positions as they fought for 15th.

As the race drew to a close, Nesbitt pushed up into 14th place and set his best lap time of 1:45.411.

Nesbitt said: “It was a pity with qualifying as our strategy seemed sound and I would have liked to have been further up the field.

"We just got caught out by the hailstorm at the end of Q2. That obviously made things a lot more difficult for the race but to have started 29th and finished 14th, I can’t be too disappointed.”