GBmoto Kawasaki's James Ellison has said he needs to take some big steps forward with setup at Brands Hatch tomorrow after finishing outside the top-ten in today's first MCE British Superbike session at the Kent circuit.

During pre-season testing, his team have been working on improving the throttle connection on his Kawasaki – but he is still experiencing issues, which is leaving the Kendal rider frustrated as every time he pushed today he couldn't make any headway in terms of laptimes and ended in 13th.

“We need to improve massively. We are a point eight off the leading riders which is a lot here,” said Ellison, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“In the middle of the session we were point five off and in the top ten and I felt we had a bit more left in the bike. But the harder I pushed the slower I seemed to go which was frustrating as we needed to go faster.

“We have got a lot of information to go on from today, and the throttle connection is something that I am still not happy with.  We were working on it during winter testing and it is something we still need to improve on this weekend.”