Josh Brookes powered the Milwaukee Yamaha to a front row start for tomorrow’s opening MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship race at Thruxton with the Australian qualifying second on the grid.

Brookes and the team had been working hard throughout the free practice sessions and it paid off in qualifying, ending 0.116s adrift of pole-sitter Jakub Smrz. Tommy Bridewell will start the opening race from the second row of the grid in sixth position and is confident of a fighting position in the two races tomorrow.

Brookes said:

“The Milwaukee Yamaha is working well here, we have made improvements over the weekend to get the compromise we needed and the combination has given me the feeling and drive that we had been looking for. We were fast in the wet and then this afternoon we were there in the dry in qualifying. I have done a lot of laps on the race tyre and we needed to get more laps on that as what I need to do to beat Shakey in the Championship is to win races. I am focused on that and I am happy with today.”

Bridewell said:

“I am disappointed with qualifying this afternoon as I don’t feel that the second row was the best we could have achieved. I didn’t get the chance to show what we know we are capable of doing today but we are going to reassess everything this evening so we can fix the problem ready for the races tomorrow. We know that we can run a good pace and to be honest it is the races that are important.”

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