Harry Payne and Mark Wilkes were lucky to escape serious injury in a high-speed crash at Le Mans in the Sidecar World Championship opener.

The locally-sponsored DAO1886 pair had already produced a stunning drive to grab provisional pole in qualifying, 0.2 of a second ahead of defending world champions Markus Schlosser and Marcel Fries.

Their time was a full half-a-second under the sidecar lap record for the French circuit.

Shortly later they suffered a huge crash at turn one, flat out in sixth gear at 216kph (134mph).

The bike sustained heavy damage in the crash, but luckily the riders escaped relatively unscathed with only the driver, Ballasalla-based Payne, suffering a broken nose and two black eyes.

‘I was pushing too hard unnecessarily and had a big slide on the first flat out right- hander that I just couldn’t save... it’s racing, although it was my fault ultimately,’ admitted Harry on Tuesday morning.

‘We had pole in the bag and there was only 30 seconds left in the session. Stupid of me to keep pushing so hard. Lack of experience unfortunately.’

The team showed true resilience in their efforts to salvage the weekend.

After the generous loan of a chassis by one of the French teams, the boys managed to quickly put together a mish-mash of a sidecar and got it round for an eighth-place finish in race two, bagging themselves eight valuable world championship points in the process.

‘That was the hardest thing I ever did, I struggled all race to get down the gearbox into the corners, and my leg was on fire as we didn’t have an exhaust tunnel for the bike,’ he added.

‘I was so overwhelmed to finish the race.’

Team manager, Linda Alton-Heath, said: ‘These things happen in racing, I’m so proud of how the whole team dealt with this very difficult situation and we have to extend a great thanks to our fellow competitors that pulled together to help us.

‘Now we will re-group and come back stronger for Assen this weekend.’