Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes kicked off the fifth round of the MCE British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch by setting the pace to hold off standings leader Shane Byrne by 0.253s.

Brookes had been 0.008s adrift of Byrne in the closing stages of the session, but in the final two laps of the second free practice, the Milwaukee Yamaha rider pulled the pin to go straight to the top. Brookes had been building momentum throughout the two sessions and is confident ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session.

Tommy Bridewell ended the opening day sixth fastest as he resolved an earlier problem to set a short run of faster laps in the final moments of the afternoon session. Bridewell is fully focused on trying to secure his first front row start of the season.

Brookes said:

“Today has not been completely perfect, but it has gone fairly well really – we are at the top of the times. In the first session we started on the SC1 tyre as I normally use that one for the race and only use the SC0 on the odd occasion. But with the temperature being as hot as it was today it was the ideal environment for the SC0, so for the second session we made some more changes and we were able to do consistent and good lap times. It wasn’t perfect as I said before, but I am fairly satisfied with how we have ended today with a really good, consistent run and the fastest time.”

Bridewell said:

“Today wasn’t completely plain sailing but we turned it around. This morning was nice and steady and we started to build for the weekend. This afternoon though we had a problem with the front tyre, I was pushing hard and I kept losing the front. We changed some settings and that didn’t work, but then we went back out on track on a new tyre and we were completely back to where we knew we should be. I only had four laps at the end for a real shot of a time, so to still end up where we are with the problem we had was no mean feat.”

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