Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes left today’s MCE British Superbike test annoyed that he was just pipped to first place on the timesheets by title rival Shane Byrne after leading the way for most of the day.
Brookes was edged out by Byrne just before the chequered flag came out when the Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki man put in a 1’29.550 to trump the Bringelly’s man last effort of 1’29.736, set just one lap before. However, the pair were the only men able to lap in the 1'29s bracket, with Brookes doing three right at the end to add to his first in the middle of the afternoon, and Byrne four in his last run.
“I’m annoyed that I didn’t get the fastest outright time as I would be any other weekend/event – it is always the ultimate goal. Normally when you are P6 or P5 or whatever you happen to be, you can’t really moan that you’re not P1, you just have to accept that is where you were. But when I was P1 most of the day, I’m kind of a bit annoyed that I wasn’t more strategic with the day,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com at Donington Park.
“If I look at the positive side of it, we can do those lap times consistently lap after lap, my best lap of the day was on lap 11 of the rear tyre so I was pretty happy. I had a bit of traffic early on when the tyre was good and then I gathered my momentum again and put three 1’29 lap times in a row and the best was a 1’29.7 so in the grand scheme of things, I’ve actually had a successful day – I didn’t just do a one off, bite-the-screen one and get the lap time which in my opinion.
“I think as a whole, the big picture, when I discuss the bike, the position and where we are with the team, everyone seems quite positive and happy. Mick says we are doing a good job, you’re only just new to the bike and we are hardly making any changes and you are already going quick. We have literally done a couple of changes with the link setting and a couple of changes with the front spring because of different tracks more so than chasing some ideal set up.
“That is more or less it, I’ve been riding a similar package to the first day I rode it. I have ridden three different tracks and been consistently fast at all of those so using these elements to draw from, I think we are in really good shape for the start of the season.”
