Milwaukee Yamaha enjoyed a relatively successful qualifying session at Brands Hatch today, with both Josh Brookes and Broc Parkes finishing the day inside the top 10.
Brookes will start race one from fourth position, 0.336s behind pole-sitter James Ellison, with Parkes down on the third row in ninth.
Brookes had been challenging for a front-row start throughout qualifying, actually topping Q1 with a lap-time of 45.643, but narrowly missed out in the final session by only 0.059s.
Afterwards, Brookes said: “We’ve improved the bike as a whole, we’re quite consistent, but I made a lot of mistakes in qualifying – I don’t think we’ve found the sweet spot with the bike as it is at the moment. I can do fairly close to the fastest lap times, fairly regularly, so as a race set up goes, we’re in good form.
“I know in myself, from what I’ve felt with the bike that it can be better – especially that last corner. I love to run it wider and I have to slow down the bike a bit more to find the grip, to come back and I think I’m losing time there. It’s just putting it all together and tailoring it together, so it all works in conjunction, rather than just one good bit and then suffering somewhere else. Overall I’m quite positive about tomorrow.”
For Parkes, today was a huge improvement having not been able to get near the top 1o throughout the first three practice sessions on the Indy circuit.
He said: “I am actually pretty happy as after yesterday I wanted to be in the top ten. We made some big improvements and I felt much better – there was a better feeling with the bike and that showed.
“I struggled with the last corner where I hadn’t ridden the Indy circuit until yesterday, and that section is so crucial. I have been working on that and still have time to find out more in the warm-up session and take steps forwards. We will then try and fight hard in the races.”