Josh Brookes was encouraged by the way he improved as the day unfolded after setting the fastest time in Friday practice at Cadwell Park. The Milwaukee Yamaha rider was quickest in both sessions, going underneath the lap record in the afternoon, but admits it took a while for him to feel comfortable with his YZF-R1.
“The session felt different this morning, even a bit slippery – we did a really fast time at the test just a week ago so we expected to be similar and do much the same. I found it difficult and we thought it might have been a tyre thing, but a different one felt the same so it definitely wasn’t that. We played around with a few settings in the afternoon session and everything seemed to be better. We then went back to what we had this morning and it was better again as the track improved.”
Having enjoyed a four-tenth advantage over his rivals today, Brookes is in a position to experiment on set-up and the championship leader will use Saturday morning’s final practice as a test session.
“We are going to try something different now tomorrow as we know the setting we have got is comfortably good enough to race tomorrow. Whilst we have that luxury we are going to try something a little more out of the window to see what we can achieve, it might work, it might be a waste, but it’s all down to trying.”
Brookes will be the sole Milwaukee Yamaha rider in action this weekend with regular teammate Broc Parkes on Endurance World Championship duty at Oschersleben.
