An improved performance wasn’t enough for Lydd’s Bradley Ray to take home points from the Donington round of the Superbike World Championship.

Yamaha Motoxracing rider Ray went closest to scoring in race one, finishing 16th - one place outside the points - before an 18th-placed finish in race two.

However the weekend’s second full race was Ray’s quicker and he improved by 17 seconds.

After a best qualifying time of 1min26.242sec, Ray recovered from a poor race one start from the sixth row of the grid but finished 11sec off final points scorer, Motocorsa racing’s Michael Ruben Rinaldi. Toprak Razgatlioglu of BMW won the race.

In cool, cloudy conditions, Ray then tackled the Superpole race over a distance of 10 laps. Getting away from row six, he was unable to find the kind of pace that would allow him to make up ground, leaving him 19th at the chequered flag and 24th in the championship standings. Razgatlioglu, meanwhile, again set the pace at the front.

In race two, also won by Razgatlioglu, Ray was unable to express his full potential or that of the YZF-R1, but was happy to have at least improved his race pace.

“I’m pleased with my last race here at Donington,” he said.

“We made a step forward with the bike, were in fact 17 seconds quicker than we were in race one, and I was able to stick with the chasing group.

“I’m lacking a little grip and acceleration, but today I did my best and know I gave it my all. Thanks to the whole team for their hard work this weekend, and now we’ll focus on the next round.”

“Unfortunately, although we improved on our race time by 17 seconds, we weren’t able to reach the points zone as planned,” team principal Sandro Carusi added.

“We’re disappointed but determined to keep going with our work, to improve further and achieve the kind of results we know we can obtain.”

The championship continues this weekend at the Autodrom Most in the Czech Republic.