The Milwaukee Yamaha team got the penultimate round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship underway at Silverstone today with Tommy Bridewell and Josh Brookes ending the opening free practice sessions in fifth and eighth places respectively.

The Milwaukee Yamaha team-mates have been working hard throughout the day on the set up for the 3.66-mile Northamptonshire circuit as the pair aim to build on their current position in the championship standings with Brookes holding third and Bridewell just five points adrift in fourth place.

The pair have been building momentum throughout the two free practices in preparation for tomorrow’s qualifying session and are confident of further improvements as they bid to battle for a front row start in race one.

Brookes said:

“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. 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.”

Bridewell said:

“Today has gone ok really and we have just been getting into the weekend. I don’t feel 100 percent comfortable just yet but we are working hard so that we are ready for the races on Sunday. We are trying to get the Milwaukee Yamaha working better over the bumps as it was unsettling it a bit in places and once we have that sorted then we should be ok and ready to go. The boys in the garage are working hard though so we can try and push on again for qualifying tomorrow.”

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