FOR only the third time in his racing career, Odiham's Louis Foster ended a race weekend without any silverware as the trip to Snetterton proved to be testing time.

The 16-year-old had a tricky time qualifying at the 2.99-mile Norfolk-based circuit.

Suffering an issue with his gear selection, Foster was not able to deliver his full potential and the Copart-sponsored driver had to settle for eighth on the grid for race one - with his second fastest qualification time would see him start ninth for race three.

The first of three races saw the Double R Racing driver maintain his eighth position starting place as he aimed to make it through to the finish without any issues.

As his confidence grew during the race, Foster eventually set his fastest lap on lap 10 of 11 as he brought the car home in eighth position.

The second race of the weekend proved to be more positive for the Vansdirect-sponsored driver. Louis fought valiantly to finish fourth after an intense 15 minutes of racing.

With competition so closely contested, Foster set to work and executed a sensational double overtake on Alex Connor and Sebastian Alvarez at the hairpin.

After sustaining minor damage fighting for this, Foster knuckled-down and battled on to record his best finish of the weekend with a thoroughly deserved fourth place, his best result since Croft.

The third and final race at Snetterton was another challenging outing for the youngster.

The Hampshire-based driver had a great start to the race and was up into seventh by the time the first lap was completed.

Unfortunately, he dropped a place after battling with Alex Connor and crossed the line in eighth position to round off a difficult weekend for the youngster.

After the challenging weekend, Foster and the team are working extremely hard to make a comeback at the next round at Thruxton (August 17/18).

Foster said: "It has been a difficult weekend for myself and the team. In qualifying, we had an issue come out of the blue and this handicapped our true performance which was frustrating but the team did a great job to get the car sorted for race one.

“For race one, we did what we could and scored some points which was good. Race two on Sunday was better, I had lots of fun with plenty of battles and a fourth was a much more positive result, despite it not being a podium. Race three, however, was again tough and eighth was the best we could manage but we need to analyse why the pace we had in race two wasn’t there.

“The luck just hasn’t gone our way in the past two rounds but the team and I will be working tirelessly to ensure that we bounce back and return to the form we were in at the start of the year. There’s been a number of things that have been out of our control but we won’t rest until we are back up the order and firing on all cylinders.”