Championship leader Josh Brookes took pole position for this afternoon’s Bennetts British Superbike Championship race at Brands Hatch with the VisionTrack Ducati rider posting the first sub 1’25m lap of the weekend around the 2.43-mile GP circuit.
Brookes traded places at the top of the leaderboard with fellow Australian Jason O’Halloran (McAMS Yamaha) but with three of the 25 minutes remaining, the 2015 Champion set a 1’24.983s lap which not only went untouched but also gave him a healthy 0.385s advantage over O’Halloran and double that over third placed Christian Iddon.
With the circuit having dried out after the morning’s damp practice, the lap times quickly came down from Friday’s only previous dry session and it was Glenn Irwin (Honda Racing) who set the initial pace with a 1’26.158s lap but Ryan Vickers (RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki) was having no such luck and crashed at Surtees just five minutes into the session before being taken to the medical centre.
Brookes went to the top of the pile for the first time after 15 minutes with a 1’25.836s lap but O’Halloran went with him, lapping just 0.061s slower as Iddon also went quicker than Irwin, the Ulsterman dropping back to fourth.
After a slight lull in the track action, O’Halloran went back out and with just five minutes remaining he went almost half a second quicker than Brookes at 1’25.368s as Luke Mossey (Rich Energy OMG Racing BMW) and Peter Hickman (Global Robots BMW) briefly moved up to third and fifth respectively.
Brookes wasn’t to be outdone though and with a series of pink sector times, he leapfrogged O’Halloran to take pole position around the circuit he always excels at.
The latter had to settle for second with Iddon taking third on the second VisionTrack Ducati although he was some 0.787s adrift of his team-mate to give him plenty of food for thought ahead of this afternoon’s race.
The returning Bradley Ray (Synetiq BMW) took fourth to head up the second row just ahead of Mossey and Gino Rea, whose late charge on the Buildbase Suzuki helped propel him up the order to sixth.
Irwin had to settle for seventh, 0.934s adrift of Brookes, ahead of brother and Honda Racing team-mate Andrew Irwin, fifth title contender Tarran Mackenzie (McAMS Yamaha) and Jack Kennedy (RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki.)
