Tyco Suzuki's Josh Brookes felt extreme highs with his first MCE British Superbike win of the season in race one, but was then was unable to replicate his victorious form in race two, where he spectacularly dropped off the pace and crossed the finishing line in fourth.
The likeable Aussie is not pointing the finger, but after his success in the first race he decided that it was too much of a risk to change anything on the bike, and kept everything the same apart from new tyres.
Lack of grip was a huge problem for the Northern Ireland resident, and was 'surprised' with how he wasn't in a position to fight for another podium, let alone another victory. But the rider pushed as hard as he could. It certainly put a dampener on his weekend, as he experienced completely contrasting performances' on the bike.
"I was a bit surprised with race two, I am not going to say confident, but we thought we had a great chance in race two after the great success in race one. We did not make any changes to the bike, sometimes I make changes between races if there is something not right, to see if we can fine tune it a bit more, but we didn't do that as I did not want to jeopardise that and make it worse. I felt it was too much of a risk to make any changes, so we and just fitted new tyres and filled it up with fuel and went again," said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the circuit.
"I could feel it straight away in race two, on the first and second laps it spun and I thought that was just a characteristic of being on the first lan. Then I got to turn three and it spun badly again and it kind of clicked with me and the penny dropped and knew that this was going to be a long race and it wasn't going to work out.
"I pushed as hard as I could just before the pace car came out I kind of found a rhythm, I was not in a position to make a challenge on Alex but I felt that I was able to hold on a bit better and then the pace car came and then I was never really in the race again. I don't want to point the finger, but it is pretty easy to guess where things may have gone wrong so I will leave it at that."
