Swan Yamaha's Tommy Hill is on a learning curve for the early part of the 2012 British Superbike season, adjusting from the YZF-R1 on which he took last year's title to the somewhat neutered version this rules have provided.

The Surrey man goes to this weekend's Oulton Park round coming off the back of a brace of second places at Thruxton which lifted him to fourth in the championship chase but he reckons better results are on the cards.

“I think so far this season it has been a bit of a learning curve for everyone with the regulation changes. We certainly learnt a lot from Thruxton and I think the use of different tyre combinations was a bit of a variant; Brands Hatch was obviously difficult conditions so I think at Oulton Park we could see things turn around again," said Hill.

"We had a pole position and a race win there last season so I would like to think that despite the changes we can have another strong performance again. I think that in the first race I will have a lot of work to do as I am starting from the fifth row as that was the one from Brands Hatch but we will just have to push as hard as we can and then set ourselves up for the next two races on the Bank Holiday Monday. We missed out on the win twice at Thruxton so we are going out to change that at Oulton Park.”