The Milwaukee Yamaha team kicked off the ninth round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Donington Park today (Friday) and both Josh Brookes and Tommy Bridewell now feel confident of their direction ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session.

The pair, who are both already qualified for the Showdown fight for the title, are fully focused on securing the final Podium Points in the final races of the Main Season on Sunday and today Brookes and Bridewell ended free practice in fourth and eighth respectively.

Both sides of the garage have been working hard to find the optimum set-up for the Donington Park circuit, to find a balance for the fast and flowing sections of the first half of the lap against the contrasting second half with its stop and start nature. The team now continue their preparations ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session at the Leicestershire circuit.

Brookes said:

“Today has not been ideal but there are a couple of reasons for that. I have had to change my gearing so I am not on the rev limiter for so long. We have tried a set-up this morning and I didn’t like it. It was good on paper, but on track it didn’t work so we had to go in a different direction using a different gear pattern. It has taken me a bit of time to ride the correct way to make the best of those changes, because you want to ride a certain way, but because of the nature of the track here you spend more time on the edge of the tyre at a higher RPM.

“We have made our way back again with the setting this afternoon and it is better for the bike and the potential appears to be there. We have overlaid the data and I need to make some changes tomorrow. For instance I am braking too late and then carrying too much speed into the corner and then I lose speed on the way out. I just have to make some more changes and adjust the way I am riding. It is a mixture of the two because at the moment I am being more aggressive than I should be. At the test here at the start of the year with no racing element we built up slowly, you don’t have that ‘we have to go hard’ and that triggers the stab the brake action. That’s essentially where I can improve but we are looking at what we can do to make the bike at its optimum.”

Bridewell said:

“To be honest today has been alright. I was a bit disappointed with free practice two when we ended up eighth because we didn’t achieve anywhere near what we were expecting. This morning we had a few problems, but we were a lot stronger and more comfortable to set consistent times than we were this afternoon. We made some massive changes to get me more comfortable but it went the opposite way so we didn’t achieve the times. To be honest in hindsight we could have reverted back to the settings from this morning, but we didn’t get a chance at the end. We will get back to the drawing board now and hopefully make some improvements ready for qualifying.”

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