Bennetts British Superbike Championship veteran Michael Rutter has maintained his solid start to the 2008 season with another pair of top ten finishes at
Oulton Park.
Fresh from his double podium at
Thruxton in the ‘season opener', the NW200 Ducati rider qualified on the second row of the grid but was able to avoid the melee at turn one when the opening race kicked off after a multi-rider accident forced the race to be red-flagged.
On the restart, Rutter lost valuable time when Karl Harris crashed in front of him at Druids in the early stages but then set about reeling in the riders ahead of him and battled past Tom Sykes and Cal Crutchlow to finish just off the podium in fourth.
Set-up issues on his bike meant that the 36-year-old struggled in the second race but he managed to hold seventh place when the race was red-flagged following a fall for Crutchlow – with that later becoming sixth place when Leon Haslam was excluded from the results.
The points mean Rutter now lies equal third in the standings alongside Rutter and is just a point behind second-placed Leon Camier.
"I'm pretty happy with my first race result but I just had a few issues in the second race that I couldn't do anything about," he said. "I still managed to get two good points scoring positions and with the incidents today it's not affected my championship position drastically.
"We have Brands next weekend and then straight to the North West 200; I'm joint third in the championship and looking forward to improving that at the next round next weekend."
Team manager Ken Foley was quick to praise Rutter for his performance on race day and said he was confident of another strong weekend at
Brands Hatch this weekend in the rescheduled opening rounds of the campaign.
"It's been a roller-coaster ride this weekend for the team but that is nothing unusual at this level," he said. "Rutter has done a fabulous job for the NW200 Team this weekend, given the fact that we are still waiting for certain parts to arrive from Italy, which would have eradicated some of the problems that we've had to overcome at Oulton.
