Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes ended up a frustrated man in today’s MCE British Superbike qualifying session at Donington Park after slipping to a second-row start which he believes is down to engine braking problems.
The Bringelly rider’s final lap of the last timed session today was on pole schedule until he got the third, and slow, sector of the Leicestershire track and he lost more than half a second which meant he lost out on a front-row start by just two-tenths to title rival Shane Byrne, who was third.
“It wasn’t a good qualifying for me. I crashed in FP3 which I have to accept responsibility for, maybe I braked too late or carried too much corner speed or angle but at the same time, there isn’t enough engine braking, the bike is trying to push on while I am using the brakes trying to stop it,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the track.
“The ECU parameters are keeping the throttle open so I am trying to stop and the engine is trying to go. You don’t have to be too clever to know that isn’t going to work and I ended up crashing. That, I believe, contributed to the accident.
“Obviously, it’s partly my fault but if the bike was working as I expect it too, I would have been able to run wide or take some sort of action but because the bike was doing what it was doing, I couldn’t alter my position and stop it.
“We went into qualifying with a revised setting but was still a problem, the bike is pushing into the corners instead of pulling itself back while I’m on the brakes. I’m frustrated as I know the potential is better and I know we can do better laptimes than we have been able to show but I can’t prove it.
“I don’t want to come up with excuses, or be the guy who has the book of reasons why it didn’t work, I want to go out there and everything be right but at the moment we can’t seem to do that. We will change that for warm-up and hopefully we can forget about it and I can concentrate on riding and things will improve.
“We aren’t too far away including the problems, we have a good race pace. I’m not thinking we are sixth on the grid and we are going to fade tomorrow, I am going to come forward but my question to myself is why aren’t I on the front row?”
