The Milwaukee Yamaha team opened the final round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch today with Josh Brookes and Tommy Bridewell ending free practice in third and eighth respectively.

The opening session of the day took place in damp conditions with both riders waiting until the dry afternoon free practice to up the pace with both riders feeling confident of further improvement ahead of tomorrow’s Datatag Qualifying session and opening race of the triple-header weekend.

Brookes said:

“This morning I looked at the track and watched other people going round. It already appeared to have some dry patches so I thought well there’s no point going out doing three or four laps and then only to have to go out on slicks anyway and go quicker. So, I just waited and then went out on slicks to have a look and it was too wet to ride on them so I sort of waited longer and then really just ran out of time. Because of the cool temperatures the track did not dry so we didn’t really lose anything so I was not too bothered about that.

“This afternoon wasn’t too bad, we just ran with a fairly common setup for the bike and what we usually use, it went fairly well. I’ve already matched my time in qualifying from last time I was here. I used just one set of tyres the whole run and the last lap there was my best and we just changed a little tweak on the bike. We’ve got a couple of things we want to try tomorrow, one’s a gear pattern. Out the back near Hawthorns I was running through in fourth gear where I think there’s room to definitely go back an extra gear and use third and also a line change into Graham Hill Bend. That will hopefully improve the lap time and apart from that just eek my way through the weekend.”

Bridewell said:

“Today’s been alright to be honest. Obviously this morning the conditions were bad so we didn’t get many laps in, so yeah, it was alright, had feeling on the bike. Then, in FP2, I felt really good on the bike, the bike was working really well. The position doesn’t really show our true position to be fair but the bike was working really good and we feel really happy. We’re riding well, well within ourselves, to be quite close in the times. Looking forward to tomorrow now and getting the first race out of the way.”

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