Hampshire motor cycle road-race star Francis Williamson can still win the national MRO Powerbike Championship going into the final round at Brands Hatch on Sunday.

The Petersfield ace, who works in Hamble, is the form rider going into the series finale.

He has reeled off a string of victories and goes to Brands just eight points down on championship leader Sam Corke.

Williamson's latest success came at Silverstone where, after a wet qualifying session, he won the first race from Peter Berwick on a 1000cc Yamaha, Marshall Neill on a 1000cc Suzuki and a similarly-mounted Corke.

In doing so Williamson took a new lap record on the 1.6-mile Club Circuit of 58.86 seconds on his Blueprint of Gosport-prepared Hanson BrickYamaha.

For the second race, though, it had started to rain again and, after seeing Corke fall off on the first lap, Williamson rode a "safe race" to finish fourth behind the Yamahas of Tommy Hill and Peter Berwick and the Suzuki of Paul Jones.

The race had to be shortened when Steve Marks crashed heavily coming on to the start/finish area, destroying his bike. Marks happily was soon up and about although somewhat bruised.

Corke remounted and finished seventh as many riders pulled in in the worsening conditions. Race three was a re-run of the abandoned Snetterton round (it was waterlogged) and Corke chose to ride a 600 Suzuki. Though he and Williamson had a race-long battle, the appalling wet and cold conditions worsened and Corke used the 600's nimble handling to take a narrow victory from Williamson's R7 Yamaha.

Williamson has several national title wins under his belt but, if he can pull off victory at the weekend, it will be one of the more prestigious successes for the aerospace engineer who had two years in the British Superbike Championship before switching to the MRO Powerbike series in which two other local riders Nick Sansome (250 Honda) and Jamies Hillier (125 Aprilla) have been consistent top-six finishers.