Keith Farmer suffered breaks to both legs after an accident in qualifying in the latest round of the British Superbike Championship at Knockhill.

The Clogher rider had posted a time that would be enough to earn him second place on the grid, but he never got the opportunity to capitalise on his career best grid position as he crashed heavily at turn three in the closing minutes of the qualifying session.

His legs became entangled in his Tyco BMW S1000RR, causing ‘bilateral fractures of both lower legs’.

The four time British Champion underwent successful surgery the following day, but he still faces further operations and a lengthy spell on the sidelines that will cut short his rise through the championship standings.

Josh Elliott continues to struggle to recapture his early season form. The OMG Suzuki rider notched up a 15th place finish to take one point in the first race, and improved by one position to 14th in the second race.

Josh admits he is frustrated that he has not been able to replicate the form that brought him a race win at the start of the championship.

“It was another challenging weekend,” he admitted.

“We just can’t seem to make any headway at the moment. We are trying to test things at the race circuit and it’s not really working for us.

“We badly need to get away to a private test and try to get the bike back to the way it was feeling at the start of the year. Trying to do that at a race event isn’t ideal because there is so much pressure and you are going out for sessions and you don’t have time to think about it. We will hopefully between now and Snetterton get somewhere to test a few things and get the bike back to what it was.”

Lee Johnston was making his first appearance on the track in almost two months after road racing commitments has forced him to miss out on the British Supersport rounds at Donnington Park and Brands Hatch. Despite the lay-off he was straight back among the front runners on his Ashcourt Yamaha, claiming his first podium of the campaign with a third place finish.

He put the bike in seventh place on the grid for the opening sprint race, and after a slow start made his way through the pack on race day.

“To be back on a British Championship podium is mega,” admitted Lee.

“I was well chuffed because it was a very tough weekend with the weather conditions. We might have struggled a bit more in the dry with the pace, but it seemed to work well in the wet. We had a bit of a bad start but chipped away during the race and got up to third. The leaders were gone at that stage, although we were able to pull in the gap a little bit. We had the fastest lap of the race until the very last lap, so the pace was good and felt comfortable on the bike.”

Lee was hoping to build on that third place in the second outing of the day, but mechanical problems brought an early end to his race.

“We had a gearbox problem in the second race,” he revealed.

“We were running fifth or sixth about six laps in and we ran wide a couple of times and dropped back to 15th, and then couldn’t get gears so had to pull in.”

Elliott and Johnston will both be back in action for the next round of the series in Snetterton from July 19-21.