Josh Brookes claimed the best finish of his troubled Bennetts British Superbike Championship campaign at Donington Park at the weekend with fourth place in the final race on Sunday. 

The reigning champion, however, remains understandably frustrated with his season and particularly with the grip issues that are continuing to plague him despite arguably his strongest meeting of the year and certainly his strongest since the opening round at Oulton Park. 

Fifth place in Friday’s free practice sessions meant he was able to progress straight into Q2, unlike recent meetings, and Sunday saw two of his most competitive outings with the Australian finally seeing a bit of progress.

“We’ve made progress this weekend but not as much as I would have liked and I’d say the improvements have been small as my pace and results are still nowhere near where they should be,” he said.

“There are still some issues that we need to resolve, the main one being grip and the one causing the most concern. The grip levels aren’t what I’d like and that’s having a knock-on effect on the engine braking strategy; the lack of grip means it’s difficult to get the correct engine settings and we’re yet to find the balance.”

It was issues with the engine braking that kept him down in a lowly 18th on Saturday, his corner entry affected with the feeling that the rear wheel was locking each time. An off-track excursion ultimately left him pointless.

Improvements were made for Sunday though and although he dropped back to 18th in the opening race, he soon found his rhythm and by mid-race was one of the fastest riders on track, climbing all the way up to seventh. The safety car deployment interrupted his charge and an end result of tenth didn’t reflect his true performance.

With mixed conditions for the final race, Brookes came all the way from 15th to fourth for his best result of the year to date. Whilst semi-pleased with the finish, he recognised the mixed conditions masked the problems he’s been having and there’s still plenty of work to do to get him back at the front.

“We did make improvements today from yesterday and my pace was good in the mixed conditions so there are some positives to take away from the weekend. I’m still struggling with the 2021 bike in the dry though. I’ve accepted I’m not going to get my 2020 bike back nor the feel that I had last year so I need to keep persevering as best I can.”