Craig Jones enjoyed his best race day on the PETRONAS FP1 when he finished 17th and 21st in the seventh round races of the Superbike World Championship at Brno, Czech Republic.

Foggy PETRONAS Racing team-mate Steve Martin’s run of bad luck continued when another mechanical problem ended his first race after just three laps, but he persevered in the second race to finish 19th.

With championship leader Troy Bayliss managing one eighth place finish, Yukio Kagayama secured his first double win but rookie Italian Michel Fabrizio stole the show with two stunning rides to clinch two podium finishes from 12th on the grid.

Craig was fighting for his first championship point before a gearbox problem on the last few laps of the first race ended that challenge and caused him to drop back one place to 17th. Despite problems with the gear position sensor in race two, he lapped a second faster on average and reduced the gap to Kagayama by 20 seconds.

He said: “I have made more progress here than I have anywhere else and it is a shame that I wasn’t able to qualify as well as I could have done. But I have closed the gap on Steve and the weekend has given me a lot of confidence going into the next round at Brands Hatch, where I will be aiming for Superpole and to score some points. I was doing consistent laps at the start of race two but needed to push harder and then started to chip away at those in front until the gear position sensor stopped working. I was also disappointed that the gearbox problem at the end of race one potentially cost me my first championship point.”

Steve’s first race began badly with a fire on the bike on the grid, which resulted in him starting the race from the back of the grid on his spare bike. After a good start his gear lever broke and then the bike started to seize up after three laps, forcing him to pull in.

He said: “With so many riders failing to finish the first race this was a good opportunity to score good points, so I am very disappointed. In the second race I was losing the front everywhere from the start of the race, so I just had to settle down and ride around to finish the race.”