Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes has been left annoyed and puzzled at the lack of speed during the MCE British Superbike double-header at the Brands Hatch GP circuit yesterday.
The Australian made a promising start in the free practice sessions, lapping consistently in the 1’26’s during the first day of the race weekend, but all that soon changed.Brookes felt he had to push during qualifying to get up to the speed that he experienced the day before – but that resulted in two crashes, preventing him from snatching a front row start.
The Northern Ireland based rider missed out on winning any podium credits, after he could only muster up a total of 18 points yesterday. His team tried all sorts of settings to improve the bike – but to no avail.
But it is not all bad news for the rider as he retains his second spot in the overall standings – 92 points behind the leader, Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne. Now he has to forget about the woes of the weekend as he flies to Suzuka today to take part in the eight-hours endurance event this week.
“The mixed conditions didn’t bother me, but I am not happy with the way that the bike was working and I didn’t have any good speed this weekend,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com, from the circuit.
“But the random part was in Friday’s practice in FP2 and I did a 1’26.5 and if I was able to repeat that I could have had a possible win, and that wasn’t a one off either as I was lapping consistently in the 26.5’s. But I just couldn’t do that time during the race - I don’t know where those times had gone.
“I have been banging my head against the wall and I have been trying to do anything to get the win. After the crash in qualifying I thought something got damaged or altered that we couldn’t replace, but then that doesn’t make sense because I crashed trying to go as quick as I did on Friday. But I was going at a slower speed than what I did in FP2 so I was at the limit of the bike – so it is just a mystery.
“I am just a bit annoyed really. We were focusing on trying to get the bike back to the settings we had on Friday but that didn’t work on Sunday. But I leave on Monday to go to Suzuka and I don’t want to dwell on a weekend where I did not have success.”
