McAMS Yamaha’s James Ellison used the official MCE British Superbike test session at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit to ride on both the harder and softer Pirelli rear tyre’s, and is ‘quietly confident’ going into the weekend’s activities, after setting a consistent fast pace on both tyre compounds.
Ellison set the fifth fastest time in cold temperatures of a 45.688 and tyre wear proved positive for the R1 rider. He completed 26 laps on the SC1 and his fastest was on lap 25, and he set ten laps on the SC0 and his quickest time was on his tenth rotation.
Early in the test outing in Kent his crew made some small adaptations to his Yamaha. They changed the sprocket and took a link out of the swing-arm to make it shorter, and the changes all enabled Ellison to go faster, and lap in the 45’s.
“Initially there were a few set-up changes that we needed to make. We changed the sprocket twice in that session to change the gearing,” said Ellison, speaking to bikesportnews.com from the track.
“The swing-arm was quite a bit too long at the beginning so we had to take a link out so it was good that we had today’s session to get the bike set up tomorrow and every time we made a change we went faster. We did loads of 45’s we were consistently fast, but we weren’t at the top and we didn’t quite have that pace.
“The hairpin at Druids is the only place where we are losing a lot of time. It is just on the brakes tipping in we are squashing the front tyre, so I feel if we can fix that we can be strong everywhere else.
“We are one of the quickest through the second and third sector, but the first sector I am losing too much time. Happy with the consistently, we ran the SC1 in the majority of that session and we did 26 laps of it and my best was on 25, and we did ten laps on the zero and my best was lap was ten, so consistently and tyre life is strong.
“I am quietly confident for the weekend. The bike it is good for hard and soft and it is quite cold and it will probably be cold this weekend. It is probably going to be the one tyre we need to run, and I am happy with the pace we have on the one.”
