The Milwaukee Yamaha team have vowed to come back stronger after a challenging fifth round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch today.

In the opening race of the day both riders were determined to fight their way through the pack, but for Josh Brookes he was unable to match his pace from earlier in the weekend and battled to sixth position, whilst Tommy Bridewell was forced to retire.

The second race was halted twice and was restarted in wet conditions. Bridewell was eager to score points for his championship challenge after missing out in race one and worked his way up to fourth place with some decisive moves. Brookes meanwhile had been picking off the riders ahead of him, but then on the tenth lap he ran on at Surtees. The Australian was able to rejoin and salvage an eighth place finish to leave Brands Hatch in second place in the overall standings.

Brookes said:

“I am not sure why it has been difficult this weekend. The thing that troubles me the most is that I went faster on Friday than I have done the rest of the weekend. In second practice I did a lot of good times, consistently. The rest of the weekend I have not even been able to get close to those times and I even crashed in qualifying trying. We have had an off weekend, of course you would like to be perfect at every event, but for some reason I didn’t have a good feeling for the bike after the crash.

“I thought I would go forward in the wet second race with those conditions, but I didn’t have the confidence in the wet either. At one point I was starting to get a feeling that I could make a bit of progress and then I ran off the track when the bike slid. I then just bought it home and thought, don’t bust it here, save it for the next round’”.

Bridewell said:

“Today was a testing day for me and the team to be honest. We showed a really good and strong pace all weekend. I loved riding my bike in all the conditions today though so all credit the team. We have made no secret we have had a niggling brake problem the last couple of races and it got the better of us in race one which forced me to DNF. We did everything possible to solve it and then it rained, so we can’t be certain we fixed the problem, but we didn’t have any issues in race two. All in all it has been a satisfying weekend, we are fifth in the championship, and we are not a million miles away so we can’t be too disappointed.”

Team co-ordinator Mick Shanley said:

“This weekend has not been what we expected, especially when free practice started well for us. In qualifying and the races though, we struggled to match that pace and we now need to work hard to work out why and resolve that ready for Thruxton. It has been frustrating as we know we should be pushing for more than what we have achieved today, but we need to focus our efforts on Thruxton and we will be doing everything to fulfil our potential.”

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