Relentless Suzuki's Josh Brookes has surprised himself with his third place in today's British Superbike qualifying session at Silverstone today and puts it down to a change in engine spec after this morning's final free practice.

The Australian pulled a fast lap out of the bag in the final minutes of the last timed session go park himself on the front row and attributes it to putting in an engine which is mapped for a higher top end rather than for corner exit speed.

"Being on the front row is a bit of a surprise to me. We have been struggling for a lot of the weekend but for that last qualifying session we changed engines. The team have always had two specs of motors and I've always favoured one more than the other," said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"The one used for tight and twisty tracks wasn't working for me here and I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could in the turns but the laptimes weren't coming, so we changed the engine and it seems to work a lot better than it has done at other tracks. We're giving the tyres a hard time so the races are going to be interesting."