The Milwaukee Yamaha team celebrated a commanding double victory in the sixth round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch, closing the deficit in the overall standings to just five points and claiming the maximum ten Podium Points available.

In the opening race Brookes settled into second on the first lap and was instantly on the attack, claiming the lead by lap four and following two Safety Car interventions kept his cool to bridge the pack to win by 0.507s. Parkes narrowly missed out on the top ten in eleventh place.

In race two Brookes was determined to build on his race one win – the first victory in MCE BSB for the next generation YZF-R1. The Milwaukee Yamaha rider bided his time to hit the front on the eighth lap with a calculated move to hold the position to the finish, whilst Parkes claimed tenth place.

Josh Brookes

“It’s strange, we’ve gone this far into the season and haven’t been able to win and then we get two in the one day - it’s pretty awesome feeling. It’s a team environment; the guys have worked so hard to make the bike better for me each round and at the start of the season.

“When you wait for something you really appreciate it and the bike worked really well by race day - I couldn’t fault it and I think it’s down to our plan we had in place. We had a ‘Theoretical Thursday’, ‘Effort Friday’ and try whatever we needed to do to get that done, a ‘Sensible Saturday’ where we put settings in that were just sensible to get the job done and ‘Successful Sunday’. We had a plan, we stuck to it, and we achieved.

“It all reflects back on the bike really, I didn’t improve the round or the round before that – the bike did. It’s given me the ability to ride with confidence and you can see in the start of the second race the team had made a small change. From what we could see in the data they thought this would help so I told the team to do what you need to do, and I’ll just ride it.

“The first couple of laps I thought ‘this isn’t right, I’m not turning in, I’m not getting apexes’, and Shakey really seemed to have control of the first couple of laps in his typical style and didn’t seem to be suffering from anything I was hoping to capitalise on. Then about four laps in, it just started to settle into a rhythm and the bike started to feel even better than race one.

"I was able to just watch Shakey for a little while and then had a look in a few places but I couldn’t see the correct place to do it and then an opportunity opened up and I went for it. To get into the lead and to get a gap is such a great feeling – the bike was on rails and it changed direction like a cat, it was just perfect.”  

Broc Parkes

“It has been a mixed day really, I struggled a bit with the front in both races and I didn’t have the confidence to brake how I wanted to and the result were not as high as I was expecting.

"In the second race I had good pace towards the end, but at the start I couldn’t go with the guys. I caught a few of them and made positions up. We learnt a lot this weekend and we have some ideas for the next races, next I am off to Suzuka for the Eight Hour then on to Thruxton.”