Dan Cooper’s strong run of form in the Pirelli National Superstock 1000 Championship continued at Oulton Park at the weekend with the Stroud rider claiming 14th and 15th in the two races to add three more points to his season’s haul.

The weekend started on a damp note with Friday’s first free practice session seeing wet conditions but the weather improved for the afternoon and a lap of 1m39.730s saw Cooper end up in a solid 19th place. Saturday’s qualifying session saw similar conditions but with a near second improvement in his lap time, he qualified in 15th place – a season’s best – for the first race later in the afternoon.

A good start to the 12-lap race saw Cooper move up a position and a lap later, he was up into 13th. However, it soon became a frenetic ten-rider battle for seventh place which saw positions change all the time and by half race distance, he found himself shuffled to the back of the pack and in 17th. He regrouped in the closing laps though and crossed the line in 15th place for another hard-earned Championship point.

Starting Sunday’s second race from 16th, him complete the first lap one place further back but by lap four he’d moved up into 14th only for the safety car to be deployed for a period of three laps. It upset his rhythm slightly but he was able to hold onto the position for the second half of the race and he duly took his fifth points-scoring finish of the season – and third in a row – to continue his good run of form.

Cooper said: “Coming back to a circuit for the second time this year has made such a difference and with the settings for the bike already dialled in, I was on the pace straightaway. I qualified higher up than I have all season and that allowed me to run in the points almost immediately in the first race. For that reason, I was a bit disappointed with 15th as it could have been a top ten finish such was the closeness of the racing; I just needed to be more aggressive.

“In the second race, the safety car period upset my rhythm quite a bit and when it got back underway, I nearly got wiped out by another rider so it was a bit of a scrappy race from that point of view. The end result was one place higher up than the first race though and I’ve made a good leap forward this weekend. We’ve got the bike working well and I now feel like I’m running with the riders that I should be running with. I’m fighting for the points now on a regular basis and everything’s going in the right direction.”

The next round of the series takes place at Donington Park on October 4-6.