Johnston moves up to fourth spot after secondand third-place finishes

LEE Johnston moved up to fourth in the British Supersport Championship with second- and third-placed finishes at the latest round at Oulton Park.

The Ashcourt Racing rider claimed his best points scoring weekend since the opening round of the season at Silverstone to move up a place in the championship standings, with a top-three finish still a possibility ahead of the final two rounds of the season.

Jack Kennedy has dominated the British Supersport championship this season, putting together win after win, but at Oulton Park he crashed out of contention in the opening race.

Lee Johnston was not in the best position to take advantage of the leader’s misfortune as he had endured a poor qualifying session that saw him qualify back on the third row of the grid.

He had moved up to sixth by the end of the fourth lap, and at the halfway point of the 12-lap race had made up another two positions.

In the closing laps, the Maguiresbridge rider took advantage of Kennedy’s misfortune to move up to third, 6.6 seconds adrift of the winning bike of Bradley Perie.

There was further drama in the second race of the weekend, with Johnston coming through to take second place in Sunday’s race

The first lap saw Harry Truelove, Luke Jones and early leader Luke Stapleford all crash out, with Johnston keeping close to the leaders in third spot.

Johnston dropped to fourth on lap four as Perrin moved past him, but Lee responded immediately to retake his podium position. There was only 0.6 seconds separating the first four before newly crowned champion Kennedy was hit with a long lap penalty for causing an accident.

That allowed Lee Johnston to take the lead of the race with five laps remaining, but Perie quickly came back past and had opened up a 1.2 second lead as they entered the final lap.

Johnston did close the gap to half a second in a nailbiting final circuit, but just missed out his first Supersport race win of the season.