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Victor Cox battled his way from the fourth row of the grid to finish in the top ten in the latest round of the Metzeler National Superstock 1000 Championship at Cadwell Park on Bank Holiday Monday.
Victor was consistently quick throughout the weekend, in Free Practice on Saturday morning he posted a time 1:32.47 to finish ninth and improved on this time by over half a second in the First Qualifying session. The session was held in dry conditions although caution had to be exercised as light rain was reported at Hall Bends. Undaunted, Victor posted a lap of 1:31.72 on his final lap of the session to consolidate his ninth place and place him as the top Kawasaki runner on both occasions.

With the second session to come, Victor was looking strong for a high qualifying position but his aim of moving up the classification was thwarted when he slipped off at the chicane in the closing stages and he was left to look on in frustration as he subsequentally dropped three places to twelfth.

With only three riders per row on the grid, Victor was back on the fourth row and both he and the team knew that he could possibly have his work cut out on the tight, twisty Cadwell Park circuit where passing opportunities are scarce.

Nevertheless Victor put in his usual determined performance and gave it a real go. Dropping a place in the first two laps, he got past Steve Plater on the third lap to move back to twelfth where he remained for the next few laps, albeit almost a 1.5 seconds down on James Hillier in eleventh at the end of the fifth lap.

A sixth lap of 1:31.02 then moved Victor to within a second and with another solid lap of 1:31.14 he was now right on the tail of Hillier as Luke Quigley crashed out moving Victor up to eleventh. A further move up the standings seemed inevitable and that move came a lap later as he got past Hillier and with a bit of clear track Victor set his sights on Howie Mainwaring and Kenny Gilbertson who were battling for eighth. With three laps to go Victor was safe in tenth but trailed the duo in front by over two seconds however a couple more consistent laps in the 1:31 bracket closed him to within 0.294secs of Gilbertson at the flag and less than a second away from seventh place man Barry Burrell, leaving Victor to rue the decision by the organisers to cut the race by a lap in favour of an extra warm-up lap.
However another strong performance from Victor who now looks forward to the next installment of the Championship in two weeks time at one of his favourite circuits Croft.

Meanwhile there was disappointment for David Pearce in the Metzeler National Superstock 600 class. The young Manxman finished 20th in his group in Free Practice with a time of 1:39.23 and in First Qualifying he also went over half a second quicker at 1:38.63. Any hopes of further improving on this were dashed as the second session was held in wet conditions with David finishing 14th in the group. The omission of the normal shoot-out race from the programme denied David the opportunity to possibly take his place on the grid for the main race.

Team boss Ian Lougher
'The team were in action at Cadwell Park for the second time this season and it proved to be a very challenging weekend. It was the end of May the first time we were at Cadwell Park this year on what turned out to be probably one of the hottest weekends of the year, and for our return visit we were confident we had a solid dry set-up for both the Kawasaki ZX-6R Superstock and ZX-10R Superstock machines. But, this time the weather was decidedly mixed and the team had to deal with torrential downpours followed by sunshine both accompanied by high winds throughout the two days of qualifying, making our dry suspension set-up completely ineffectual, and moreover, tyre choice became a lottery.
 
Having been working closely with Richard from Maxton Suspension throughout the year, which I must say has been fantastic, I am more than impressed with the quality of both rear shocks and front fork kits. Richard was, as always, on hand during qualifying and his advice and expertise got us through a difficult weekend and was pivotal to Victor's overall results.
 
So after a tough weekend I think Victor achieved a good result finishing 10th on a circuit that is so difficult to overtake on, and all the team were once again impressed by his sheer determination and riding skills. 
 
As for our Junior 600 Superstock rider, David Pearce, he was terribly unlucky not to qualify for the Superstock 600 race, missing qualifying by 2 places, after rain spoiled his second Group A qualifying session and put paid to any chance of him joining the main grid. The Junior 600 Superstock class has a strongly supported field made up of young riders with a broad spread of racing experience and because of the number of riders in the class it is usually split into 2 groups for qualifying with a shoot out race for riders not qualifying in the top 28. But for some reason there wasn't a shoot out race at the Cadwell round this time, which in my view, was unfair, and left a lot of disappointed young riders. David was obviously downbeat at not qualifying, and I hope he can put it behind him, coming out more determined for the next round at Croft in 2 weeks time. He remains a very talented young rider and shouldn't let this setback get him down.'