McAMS Yamaha’s James Ellison made huge improvements to his pace during the MCE British Superbike qualifying sessions, and so much so that he placed his R1 on the front row for the first race at Snetterton.
The Cumbrian will start from second for the opening event on Sunday and his gain in speed was down to changes made to the gearing, and the adaptations certainly paid off today. Ellison set a phenomenally fast 1’46.561, and smashed the previous outright record at the circuit by two tenths.
But he was pipped to the post by the eventual pole-setter, Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne who set a new fastest-ever lap of a 1’46.024, and that time demoted Ellison to second fastest.
The McAMS rider was able to shave a second off his free practice times after the changes to the gearing. His crew also took half a mil off the pre-load off the back of the R1 too.
“It is BSB you cant sit back and relax even when you do a time like that, you know that someone else will try and beat it. There are seven or eight guys who could win it on the day and that is just how it is and you have to keep trying your best and you might think a 46.5 is not going to get beat but believe me it is and a 46.0 might get beat next year,” said Ellison at the track.
“That is the great thing with BSB you are always improving and pushing your limits. I am happy with the time and we have been a little bit off the pace this weekend. We haven’t quite had the balance of the bike and I have not been happy with it, and we missed the official test here, and that didn’t help really. We spent Friday doing the gearing and we didn’t find any pace, until qualifying.
“It wasn’t until qualifying and all we did was changed the gearing and took some preload off the back - half a mil. We found about a second and it made the bike more stable and we finished the corner better and less wheelie and stopped better and all that from a tiny it of gearing and lengthening it.
“That was it - fair play to the boys who have been chipping away all weekend and kept their faith in me. We will have to have a good long run in warm up tomorrow and do a lot of laps on the tyres and see what we can get out of it.”
