James Ellison is determined to give his MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship campaign a boost this weekend at the second round of the season at Oulton Park, as the JG Speedfit Kawasaki rider bids for a podium return at the Cheshire circuit.

Ellison endured a challenging start to the season at Silverstone; a crash during Q1 in Datatag Qualifying put him at the back of the grid for the opening race and he battled his way through to 13th before securing eighth in race two. However following improvements at last week’s official test at the circuit where he scored a podium finish in the corresponding round last year, Ellison is gearing up to challenge for the victories in the two races on Bank Holiday Monday.

Ellison said: 

“Silverstone was a bit of a disappointment for us; we showed that we had the pace and then the weather just put pay to that. I felt that we had made a big step forward with the setting but the only chance we had to test it in fully dry conditions was in the first race so that felt like one big test to us. We had a problem with the balance of the bike so we made a drastic change between the races and it was the place where we had qualified after the crash and then trying to improve on that for the second race that hampered us.

“From the weekend though we learnt a lot about the setting and the balance of the bike and then we changed it again for Oulton Park because the characteristics of the track are so different from Silverstone. We set a time that was 0.5 off on a used tyre at the test and now we are looking forward to a few more tweaks this weekend ready for the races on Monday. I definitely think we are closer to where we should be now; we just couldn’t capitalise at Silverstone so we want to put that right this weekend at Oulton Park.”