Michael Rutter’s BSB season continues to blossom with two fourth places on the RidersMotorcycles.com Ducati this Sunday at Mallory Park in the fifth round of the MCE British Superbike Championship.

Michael is now fifth in the championship on 114 points, only 40 adrift of series leader Tommy Hill.

Michael qualified fourth to claim a front row grid slot and was running a strong third when his team-mate Martin Jessopp was involved in a crash further down the field at Charlies chicane.

The incident brought out the red flag to stop the race as Martin had suffered a suspected broken tibia and fibula in the crash.

In the 25-lap restart, Michael claimed fourth place and said: “I rode the hardest I could but was losing out in the second gear corners. We’re limited to how we can gear the Ducati, which isn’t usually an issue, but causes us a lot of problems circuit. We can run the more suitable gearing but then we compromise the ideal wheelbase length of the bike and once you do that it upsets the entire set-up of the machine.”

Rutter repeated his fourth place in the 30-lap race two and added: “We weren’t a million miles off the first three either. We struggled with low down grunt because of the gearing we were forced to run. In first gear corners, I was having to use second so we weren’t getting off the turns like the others. But we’ll keep plugging away to finish in the top six after the ninth round which will put us into the top six run-off for the title in the final three rounds.

“But it’s a such a shame what’s happened to Martin. It brings the whole team down.  Of course it’s a good result this weekend for me and the team to have two fourth place finishes but I want Martin to be up there too.”

The championship resumes this weekend in Scotland with the sixth round at Knockhill, near Dunfermline.

At this stage it’s not clear how long Martin will be out of action