The Milwaukee Yamaha team endured a tough qualifying session at Oulton Park today ahead of the third round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship with James Ellison starting tenth and Josh Waters in seventeenth on the grid for tomorrow’s opening race.

The team had high hopes heading into qualifying after Ellison had set the pace in the earlier free practice and was confident that he would be able to challenge for a front row start this afternoon; however with a technical issue that developed in the second qualifying session the team decided to be cautious and sit out the final qualifying phase. Ellison is now determined to fight back tomorrow from the third row of the grid. Waters meanwhile is hoping to make amends in the races as he starts from row five.


Ellison said:

“Before this weekend I said I really needed two good races so that I can try and close the gap in the points and it was all going to plan before qualifying. I was up there in free practice and although Alex’s lap was incredible I knew we would have had the pace to challenge for the front row, we just never had the chance. We did some laps in Q2 and I was losing a bit of power and then we started another lap and the problem was still there, so we decided to play it safe as we were not sure what caused it and then push tomorrow. It might seem bold but we have come back from worse situations in the past and we will change some things so we can try and have a good fight in the races.”

Waters said:

“I am obviously disappointed with qualifying because that isn’t where we want to be. We had moved forward over the weekend but it just didn’t come together when we needed it to. We made some changes for qualifying which we thought would be heaps better but it is always that fine balance, which today just didn’t pay off for us. We just need to sleep on it, regroup and then try and push in the races tomorrow.”

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