A best weekend of the year so far for Ducati’s Josh Brookes saw Cadwell Park reward him with his largest points haul from the first six rounds of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship.

Two competitive fifth places were his best results in the dry this season and with 28 points, and three top ten finishes, across the three races, it was good to see the VisionTrack Ducati rider and reigning champion looking a little bit more like his old self.
 
Saturday’s 10th place still left him frustrated and he felt wet weather on Sunday would probably give him his best chance of a podium but the two races saw him the most competitive he’s been all season in the dry. His race pace was only a few tenths off the leading trio and the commitment and aggression was there for all to see.
 
“The weekend started well in FP1 but whilst my pace remained the same, everyone else got quicker so finishing in 10th place in both qualifying and race one was frustrating,” Brookes said on Sunday evening.
 
“I can use all the words you can imagine to describe finishing 10th as it’s not at all pleasing but the three hours of track time on Thursday helped me get into a bit of a rhythm and being back at a track I like helped this weekend.”
 
“You could see on Sunday we’d improved but the improvements we made were still tiny. I can see on track where I’m losing time and in this series, you can’t afford to give away the time that we’ve been giving away.”
 
“Grip’s still the main issue but although the improvements have been small, we’ve still made improvements and that’s a positive. Two fifth-places isn’t where I want to be finishing but it certainly felt better to be fighting a bit closer to the sharp end and we can take those positives into the next round.”
 
Brookes remains in 12th overall in the title standings but is now only 28 points adrift of the top eight, with six more races to go before the Showdown phase of the series gets underway.