McAMS Yamaha’s James Ellison propelled his R1 all the way to pole position after a record-breaking lap at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit during the MCE British Superbike qualifying session this afternoon.
The Cumbrian smashed his own circuit record by half a second, and put down an unbeatable 44.728. No other rider was able to better the new outright lap record as Ellison cemented his first pole position of the season.
Ellison set his quickest lap on the SC1 front and SC0 rear, but thinks he will opt for the harder SC1 rear Pirelli tyre during the races, as he has had a strong pace on the harder compound throughout the weekend. He lapped a 45.2 on a 30 lap tyre, and showed that he has a competitive pace over race distance. Last year he battled for the win on the SC0 back tyre, but he thinks the zero may not last on Monday, and it all depends on the track temperature too.
“All weekend we have been struggling in sector one and our only saving grace is that we are strong in the last sector, and out on to Clearways,” said Ellison at the track.
“We have gone up nearly a kilo on the front springs and every time we went up a quarter of a kilo I could brake later and deeper and in that session we improved that first sector to get closer to Luke. We have been focusing on trying to get the lap time out of the SC1 and we have got a good setting on both. I don’t think the zero is going to last tomorrow. We ran it last year, but tomorrow I don’t think we are going to be able to run it.
“We did a 15 lap run in free practice, and the best lap was lap 15 and we kept the tyre on and we left the hard tyre in for the whole session and on lap 30 we did the best lap and went P2. Now we were half a second quicker on the zero just for that one lap, but you do another lap and it loses the edges of grip, so definitely going for the one I think. It will be a tough one but that’s BSB and I am looking forward to it.”
