The Milwaukee Yamaha team returned to Knockhill today determined to make steps forward following a tough opening day at the Fife circuit in free practice with both James Ellison and Josh Waters making improvements to move them closer to their rivals.

Ellison qualified thirteenth on the grid for tomorrow’s opening race but the Brands Hatch race winner and his crew have some changes to make for warm up in their bid to come out fighting in the races tomorrow in Scotland. Waters was unlucky to miss out on Q2 as he returned to the garage he dropped two positions in the final seconds which saw him finish in nineteenth position.

Ellison said:

“We made some big improvements and that showed if you looked at the times we did today, but we just needed to find that extra tenth to get inside the top ten for Q3. Unfortunately we had the red flag and I went out knowing we had one shot and I made a few mistakes trying too hard and equalled the time I had set already. We can do these times now so now we just need to raise the bar again in the morning; I have my homework for tonight and we will work hard again in warm up to see if we can make some more steps for the races.”

Waters said:

“I feel it was better today after we made a big change and I went 0.6 seconds faster than yesterday. We thought that would be ok to put us through to the second qualifying session but after the chequered flag I got knocked back two places and that put me out. It was unlucky and now looking at it at the end I should have been out on track pushing to try and get a better time but you can never be sure. I’ll try hard whatever the conditions tomorrow to try and just get more feeling. I think I have some things we have looked at this evening and I will sleep on it which hopefully will make the difference.”

.