Dan Linfoot dug deep to put in two determined rides for the sorrymate.com Honda team at the 2nd round of the 2011 British Superbike Championship. The 22-year old backed up his two top-eight finishes at the opening round at Brands Hatch over Easter with 10th and 15th place finishes at Oulton Park on Monday and thus maintain his top ten place in the Championship table. With perfect conditions throughout practice and qualifying, albeit for a strong breeze, Dan steadily chipped away and his times subsequently improved from session to session, moving from 16th to 12th and then 7th in the three practice sessions. That placed him in 9th overall going into the qualifying session with improvements to both gearing and suspension having paid dividends. Comfortably into the second section of qualifying, a lap of 1m36.715s looked like it would be good enough to make it into the final section but a final lap by Frenchman Loris Baz in the dying seconds bumped Dan back to 11th thus meaning he missed out. Nevertheless, he still lined up on the 3rd row of the grid for Monday's opening 18 lap race. Conditions were again ideal for race day and a superb start to the opening race saw Dan slot into 7th place at the end of the first lap and a lap later he moved past Michael Rutter for 6th. Reigning champion Ryuichi Kiyonari was on a charge though and, despite his best efforts to keep him at bay, Dan was overtaken by the Japanese rider on lap 6 and for the remainder of the race he found himself battling with Jon Kirkham, Baz, Rutter and Gary Mason. When Kirkham got by Dan at Druids on lap 12 it forced him wide, subsequently dropping him back to 9th and although he briefly got back up to 8th, chatter problems saw him eventually cross the line in 10th place. With the 9th fastest lap of the race, Dan was able to start race 2 two places further up the grid but any hopes of another top ten result were dashed on lap 2 when Kirkham pushed him wide and onto the grass at the high-speed Island Bend. This relegated him to 26th and stone last but, undeterred, a number of quick laps saw him move up to 22nd and when the safety car came out on lap 9, this put him in with a great chance of scoring some points. Sure enough, lapping comfortably quicker than a number of riders in front of him, Dan moved up to 15th with two laps to go to score an extremely valuable point. Speaking afterwards, team owner Robin Croft said: "We've put in a lot of hard work this weekend and although we were denied the two top ten finishes we felt we deserved, Dan put in another couple of strong rides, showing great determination especially in the second race. Like a number of other teams, we've been struggling with the handling of the bike and we never did find the perfect set up but we've no excuses." "Tenth place in race one was extremely hard fought and with a few suspension changes for race 2, we were confident of improving on that but a coming together with another rider ended all hopes of that. Some riders would have pulled in but, credit to Dan, he stayed out there and it was a very determined ride into 15th to pick up what could well be a valuable point. We've scored points in every race and are still 10th overall in the Championship whilst we'll have a few new parts in time for the next round which should see us improve further still so we're all looking forward to Dan's home round at Croft." - Ends -