Josh Elliott and Keith Farmer both emerged unscathed after suffering dramatic accidents at the latest round of the British Superbike Championship at Donnington Park.

Elliott came off his bike at 130 miles per hour in practice destroying his race bike, while Farmer secured two points scoring finishes before coming down heavily in the final race of a triple race weekend.

Elliott was looking to bounce back to his race winning form of earlier in the season, but the Ballinamallard rider was running towards the bottom of the top 20 in the practice session before disaster struck at high speed.

“It was one of those corners that is famous for accidents, and it’s not a good place to come down,” said Josh.

“It’s about 130 or 135 miles an hour corner, and when I went down I just tried not to tumble or hit anything.

“I was hoping the bike wouldn’t hit me, because I could hear it smashing to bits as I was sliding backwards into the gravel. When I got up I was dazed and I didn’t know where I was, and then I saw the bike and it was in bits everywhere.

“I had a few bruises but I was lucky enough. There are a lot of riders that go down there and are seriously injured, so I was lucky to walk away from it with no major injuries.”

With the first race scheduled for the following day, the team worked through the night to get Elliott back on the track for the race weekend.

“I gave the team a massive job to do overnight to get me back out the next day, and credit to them,” he said.

“They had to rebuild the bike from scratch and they got me out for practice and qualifying on Saturday, but it set us back quite a bit.

“We had a few issues with the new bike, electrical and clutch issues for the third practice on Saturday so we didn’t get much track time, and going into qualifying on Saturday we were guessing the setting and it wasn’t an ideal situation.”

The vibration in the bike when cornering that hampered Josh in the previous round returned for the first race, as he came home in 18th.

In the second race he had to retire two laps from the end when a rear tail unit came loose, and in the final race he failed to make an impression on those in front of them after starting in 20th position.

“We were behind on bike set up, and the team, even Luke Mossey my teammate, we are struggling and we are not quite sure why,” admitted Josh.

“The bike isn’t giving us what we want and we are struggling. We are going to try to get to a test pretty soon and try to find out what the actual issue is and get it sorted because we can’t keep going to every race and running into these issues, because before you know it the season will be nearly over and we will be nowhere.

“It was disappointing to get no points at all because it is a circuit I have really enjoyed so to go away with no points is very disappointing.

“We are going to have to go away and work on something to go to Brands with, and it will be a difficult season if we don’t.”

In contrast to Elliott, Keith Farmer’s season has been on an upward curve, but he had a mixed start to his Donnington weekend.

He posted the fastest time in the first practice session but on Saturday morning he fell victim to the same corner as Elliott.

His team were able to get the bike repaired and he returned to the track with ten minutes of the first qualifying session remaining and managed to get up to 23rd on the grid.

A good start saw the Clogher rider surge through to take eighth, and he followed that up with another top ten finish in race two, but the final race of the weekend ended in spectacular fashion.

Keith was inside the top ten once again but lost control on a left hand corner and was catapulted into the air. He crashed down onto the tarmac and the bike then slid over him as he hurtled towards the gravel trap, but he was fortunate to escape with just bruises.

Both riders will now be hoping to put their accidents behind them when they head to the next round at Brands Hatch on June 14-16. Elliott has slipped to seventh in the championship with Farmer currently in 12th.