Blackhorse Kawasaki's Victor Cox produced a typically spirited ride to take the team's Ninja ZX-10R to an excellent sixth place finish in Round 11 of the Metzeler National Superstock 1000 Championship at Croft on Sunday.

Victor rates Croft as one of his favourite circuits and in Friday's Free Practice session he lapped the North Yorkshire former RAF base in 1:25.64 to finish in 14th place and set himself up nicely for first official practice on Saturday. However the first session took place in the wet, but with an improvement in the weather forecast for the second session later in the day, Victor took things steady in the tricky conditions to finish the session in eleventh position. The forecasters were indeed correct as the weather did improve for the all-important second session and despite producing his quickest lap of the weekend so far at 1:24.35, Victor still found himself in 15th place and on the fourth row of the grid for Sunday's race.

Undaunted Victor got a great start and was quickly into his stride and at the end of the opening lap he had gained seven places to cross the line in eighth position. A lap later and he was up to seventh, only 0.26 seconds down on John Ingram and just ahead of Kenny Gilbertson. On the next lap both Ingram and Victor furthered their cause by getting past John McGuinness to move up to fifth and sixth respectively. On lap four the two were still locked in battle with Victor now 0.98 behind Ingram with McGuinness still in contention. However the main threat was coming from Glen Richards and despite Victor reducing Ingram's advantage to 0.78, Richards was now just 0.35 behind him as the race leader Scott Smart retired which moved Victor up to fifth. On lap 6 the hard charging Aussie had relegated Victor back to sixth, he in turn was 0.87 ahead of McGuinness.

But Victor was up for the fight and on the next lap he got ahead of Ingram to move into fifth with Richards half a second in front. By the ninth lap, he was still holding on to fifth but was just a slender 0.07 ahead of Ingram with McGuinness and Howie Mainwaring also threatening. On the next lap Ingram crashed out at the hairpin and Victor was still fifth, 0.65 ahead of fellow Kawasaki mounted Mainwaring. As they crossed the line at the end of lap 11, it was still Cox from Mainwaring, Jimmy Storrar and McGuinness with a second covering the four riders.

Victor was riding superbly well and as Mainwaring fell at The Complex on lap 12, he was still doggedly holding on to fifth 0.77 ahead of Storrar with McGuinness close by. On lap 13 Storrar had reduced the gap to only 0.20 with McGuinness now losing touch. On the penultimate lap Storrar got past Victor to lead him by 0.39 and despite Victor's best efforts on the fnal lap, he just couldn't find a way past Storrar and finished in sixth, just 0.34 behind with Steve Plater seventh, 5.48 seconds behind Victor.

A satisfying weekend for Victor, with again hard work bringing just rewards for both himself and the team. As well as his top six finish, Victor also posted the eighth fastest lap of the race and moves back to tenth in the championship with two rounds remaining.

Meanwhile his team mate David Pearce finished 25th in the Metzeler National Superstock 600 race. David also took things steady in Free Practice with a lap of 1:30.96 placing him well inside the qualifying target of 1:35.20. As with Victor's first qualifying session, David's session was also held in overcast and wet conditions and here he managed 28th position with a last lap of 1:36.58. David was also seventh quickest through the Sector 2 speed trap with a speed of 111.1mph. The second qualifying session was held in dry conditions and David finished down in 36th place but such is the nature of this ultra competitive class, his time of 1:28.54 was just over a second away from a place in the top twenty.

From the ninth row of the grid, David gave it a real go in the race itself. The first lap saw him gain three places and for the next few laps he became embroiled in a three man dice with Dean Brown and Ben Grindrod. On the seventh lap David managed to get past Grindrod and set his sights on Brown whom he got the better of two laps later, the battle between the three had allowed Bruce Winfield to break free by almost a second and it seemed that David might have a task on his hands to catch him with five laps to go. But on the next lap the gap was down to half a second and a lap later David caught and passed his rival and managed to stay in front of him to the finish.

Team boss Ian Lougher:

'That was two terrific performances from Victor and David. Both riders struggled a bit in qualifying with their suspension, but after a lot of effort from the team it all came good for them in their respective races. Victor got his lap time down to 1:23.6 which was 0.7 seconds quicker than his qualifying time whilst David went a full 1.2 seconds quicker in his race than he had done in qualifying. Victor almost got fifth, just being pipped on the penultimate lap by Jimmy Storrar and for David to finish where he did from a grid position of 36th was a great effort indeed. They both displayed great maturity, a very good weekend for the team.'

Ian himself returns to action this weekend when he competes in the 60th Steve Henshaw International Gold Cup Meeting at Oliver's Mount, Scarborough.