The Milwaukee Yamaha team are preparing to fight back in the final two races of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch tomorrow (Sunday) following a challenging opening race with James Ellison forced to retire and Tommy Bridewell missing out on a podium finish despite a hard fought ride.

Bridewell and Ellison had started fourteenth and sixteenth on the grid respectively and both were determined to make amends in the opening race. The pair had both started to carve their way through the order but Ellison was soon suffering with his visor misting up and despite persevering for several laps he was later forced to retire. Bridewell continued to fly the flag for the Milwaukee Yamaha team and he had worked his way through to sixth at the chequered flag. Bridewell and Ellison will start tomorrow’s second race from eighth and sixteenth on the grid respectively.

Ellison said:

“I am so disappointed with the outcome today and I feel gutted for the team. Qualifying wasn’t the best for us and then in the race I felt we could move up the order. I got a really good start and then I don’t know whether I got water inside it with the spray we had to start with, but my visor just misted up and my vision got increasingly worse. I couldn’t see the apex or my braking markers and then it became a case of dropping steady backwards. I had a few moments and I was trying to carry on but once I had dropped out of the points I decided to come in because I wasn’t going to move up the order and I just risked crashing. We obviously need to look at getting the problem sorted and I know we have to start from the sixth row tomorrow but I want to turn the frustration of today into results now in the final two races.”

Bridewell said:

“Today has been a mix really. We didn’t have a great setting this morning and so we decided to make some drastic changes for the race which could have gone either way but when it came to the race I was much happier and felt more comfortable. I lost about seven seconds at the start as the lead group obviously got away and I tried to move myself forward, but I worked hard and I managed to go from fourteenth to sixth so I am pretty happy with that really. I am obviously disappointed that we couldn’t be on the podium today but we have another two races tomorrow to have another go at it.”

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