FRASER Rogers lies in fourth place of the British Superbikes National Superstock season with two rounds to go following a pair of excellent results at Oulton Park last weekend.

Despite some technical difficulties with the bike costing him a chance to compete early on, Rogers showed superb ability and form to wrestle a fourth place as well as a third in the weekend’s two races.

As a result, the Swindon racer is 33 points behind top spot and still holds an outside chance of lifting the Superstock championship title.

In Saturday’s event, Rogers started back in 17th following the aforementioned mechanical gremlins but made a heroic fist of battling back towards the more valuable points positions.

Launching off the line well, Rogers had made up four places within the first lap before passing two more riders shortly after.

Now in his stride and enjoying the battles, the IN Competition man was into the top 10 by the end of lap seven and flying towards the top five.

As six further laps whizzed by, Rogers had made it up to fourth and was setting his sights on Billy McConnell in third. Unfortunately for the Swindon racer, Rogers was just pipped to the line following a breathless battle that lasted into the final corner.

Starting in fifth for the second race, Rogers got off the line well but lost a place to McConnell in the opening stages. He held sixth until lap four where he got the better of Tim Neave and Alex Olsen - two of his title rivals.

The Swindon racer had the pace to catch the top two but unfortunately ran out of laps to catch them and had to settle for another podium place.

Giving his thoughts on another successful weekend, Rogers said: “Overall, I’m really happy with the weekend. Even at round nine, we’re making big progress with the bike, gathering data and improving with each lap.

“A bad qualifying kind of ruined our race one chances, but in the race we came back strong to take a podium and in the second race we took the fastest lap and came close to the lap record.

“Thank you to the whole team, and I’m looking forward to Donington.”

Meanwhile, team manager Ian Newton said: “All in all it has been a good weekend, we will continue to work hard to achieve the ultimate goal of winning the championship.”