BOLTON motorbike racer Benjamin Heaton was back at Aintree for round three of the Ace Of Aintree championship.

He was back from the Isle of Man the previous day after competing in his first real road races at the Southern 100 races.

The Southern 100 did not go to plan after rebuilding the engine on his Falcon Electrical Honda RS125 just before the event only to see the engine fail – due to a cracked cylinder barrel – which ended his meeting prematurely.

Heaton lapped the 4.25-mile circuit in 3 mins 14 secs while nursing the bike around. He is looking at going back next year, better prepared and looking at a lap of under three minutes.

Aintree's round three saw Heaton back on the four stroke Aermacchi 350cc Classic bike. The day started with damp greasy track conditions due to showers and the Ainsworth man concentrated on setting the bike up in practice bedding in new front brake pads and setting up the fuelling for the races later in the day.

Heaton finished in a respectable fifth place in the first race from a grid full of bikes and finishing ahead of bikes with more horsepower than his.

He said: "I was able to brake harder and later than the other riders and also carry more corner speed so we pressed on and got a great result, the chassis is set up perfectly so it's only a matter of time before things improve for us."

The bike has a lot of history behind it, the Aermacchi owned by Peter Fleming who is currently tuning and rebuilding the original factory engine.

Fleming has owned the bike since 1971 and won his first championship on it that year aged 16. He then went on to win the Single Cylinder Championship of Northern Ireland and also had wins at the Southern 100 races and races on the famous TT Mountain Course.

He raced the bike all over Europe as he gained more sponsors to enable him to grow his career which enabled him to enter the Asian championship and was up against bikes from major Japanese manufacturers such as Yamaha and Suzuki, racing in events at New Zealand, Malaysia and Japan. He also raced the bike at the famous American Daytona circuit.