Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes was eighth fastest after the second MCE British Superbike free practice session at Silverstone, but his time on track was blighted by ‘bumps’, that prevented him from gaining that added pace.

The Bringelly rider feels his team were able to improve the bike, especially the rear end to cope with the bumps on the circuit – now exit grip is a problem for Brookes, but he is feeling confident that he can turn things around to compete with fellow title challengers Buildbase BMW’s Ryuichi Kiyonari and Rapid Solicitors Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne.

“The first session out we continued with our normal routine where we run what we have had previously, or we go for a compromise on settings with what we expect to work at the track,” said Brookes.

“We have come with an Assen set up that has a slight change, knowing what we do about the Silverstone circuit. The next series of things we look at are what problem one is and work on that and then number two and consider that and so on.

“Number one problem today was the bumps, particularly in the rear as it didn’t handle them too well, so we made significant changes for the second session to fix the problem and then go faster.

“We have made massive improvements on the bumps and corner entry and it feels good, but now we need to work on the exit grip and the steering from the middle of the corner to the exit of the corner.

“We improved it a bit at the end of the session on old tyres so we could get a fair comparison. On paper it might look bad but actually I am quite comfortable and confident that we can find a good direction tomorrow and hopefully be back in the range of getting closer to Kiyo.”

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