REIGNING British 125GP champion James Lodge enjoyed another successful weekend with victory at Thruxton.

In the second round of the 2010 championship the Huddersfield racer faced a dogfight with Scottish rider Deane Brown.

In the first qualifying session Lodge was fastest by half a second, but in the second session Brown, who was the pole-setter in the opening round at Brands Hatch, narrowly managed to snatch pole position away from the Manchester University student.

The race seemed set to be a straight dogfight with the pair distinctly quicker than the rest of the field.

And for six laps that was the way the race was unfolding until Brown caught a curb leaving a chicane on lap seven and fell, leaving Lodge to cruise to success.

“I had a great weekend, but Deane was pushing me all the way,” said Lodge. “In qualifying he tagged on to me when I was on a fast lap and ended up taking pole once again, but only by six-hundredths of a second, leaving me on second on the grid.

“However, Deane and I were nearly two seconds a lap faster than the third place rider, and we were very close to the lap record.

“I was confident for the race as I knew I had better race pace than Deane.

“I was predicting a two-horse race between myself and Deane as we were so much faster than everyone else in qualifying, however the race threw a few surprises.

“Deane had the advantage off the line, followed by last year’s race winner Brian Clark, then myself. However, at the end of the straight into the last chicane I out-braked both of them to take the lead.

“I managed to extend my lead to one second over the remaining laps and by the end of the race extended the gap to 1.8 seconds over second place finisher Clark, with James Ford taking the final podium place.

“Unfortunately the bike wasn’t as strong on speed as it was in qualifying, so my fastest lap was 0.7seconds slower than my qualifying time, however I still set the fastest lap and set the best sectors.”

However, James’ brother Jonathan did not have the best of meetings.

He was involved in a first corner incident in the shoot-out race, when two riders fell off in front of him and he ended up crashing out after hitting a rider on the floor, who suffered a cracked pelvis.

The race was red flagged and, though the team managed to fix the bike in time for the restart, Jonathan had to start from the pit lane and the race was too short for him to make any real progress and as a result he didn’t finish in the top ten and failed to qualify for the main race.

All the action will be on British Eurosport 2 on Thursday at 10.00. The next round is at Oulton Park in two weeks time.