Lavilla suffered a bad start from fifth on the grid, then fell from his 999 at turn one and was run over by a following competitor - who had no chance of spotting the 2005 BSB champion due to the spray being thrown up by the soaking wet conditions.

Gregorio crawled slowly to the side of the track, where he received medical treatment, but was back out for race two - although he was struggling for breath and could only manage tenth place, costing him third in the championship to team-mate Leon Haslam as he also slipped 47 points behind title leader Ryuichi Kiyonari.

"Greg's accident was quite spectacular, fast and painful," a downbeat Airwaves team manager, Colin Wright, told Crash.net Radio. "He didn't appear to do anything wrong, the data doesn't show him taking the corner any differently - although he did have a bad start and was mid pack, which upset him a bit.

"He had a huge highside and just as he landed he got run over in the midriff by another rider. It looked on TV like the bike rode over his ankle or leg but in actual fact he had the wind knocked completely out of him. We're not 100% sure but we think he might have broken some ribs as well.

"Under the circumstances he did well in race two. It was tough for him and he was in a lot of pain… we're all feeling a bit down at the moment; we're used to some bad days, but this has been severely bad."

There were problems of a more mechanical kind on the other side of the Airwaves pit, where Haslam claimed a pair of fourths - despite losing gears in the second race.

"Leon had a gearbox problem, he lost third gear - which meant he couldn't change to fourth or fifth - so for the last eight or ten laps he was only riding in first and second gear" confirmed Wright. "It's a testament to the reliability of the Ducati that it could last that long - he did some pretty good laps as well."

Haslam is now 42 points behind series leader Ryuichi Kiyonari, and 31 behind the second HM Plant Honda of Jonathan Rea, while Lavilla now sits five points behind his English team-mate heading to Mallory Park on July 22.

"Both Greg and Leon rode very well at Mallory last year and had some great dices with Kiyo. We're looking forward to doing the again if not better - we've got some points to catch up," concluded Wright.