British Superbike

Brookes confident despite tricky qualifying session

2 Mins read

Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes believes that he can still challenge for the win at Snetterton tomorrow despite issues he suffered in today’s mixed-weather qualifying session.

Brookes will start from the second-row, in fourth position, after making a slight mistake on his final flying lap of Q3 which caused him to run wide and off the circuit.

The Australian’s lap time of 1:49.876 was 1.5s off Shane Byrne’s pole lap, and only 0.160s away from third position and the final place on the front-row.

Looking back at today’s session, Brookes said: “The difficult qualifying session ruined my rhythm a little bit this afternoon. If we have over thirty degree track temperature we know that we have a set-up that works, but with the track temperature being low I was not getting the grip that I was looking for and had at the test.

“We are trying other things to see if we can make the bike work better in cooler conditions and these changes haven’t all come together just yet. If you look at my times throughout the day we can do 1min 47 laps on lap 10 rather than just a single quick lap so we should be stronger for the race. I am feeling confident that we can pick people off in the race tomorrow and have a good result.”

The challenging weather conditions today also proved to be the downfall of Broc Parkes’ qualifying session.

Parkes had once again been showing some good pace throughout Q1, just as he had been doing all weekend and at the official test held at the Norfolk circuit back in May.

After initially pitting at the end of his first attempt at a quick lap in Q2, due to a minor issue with his seat, Parkes made his way back onto the track to find that rain had started to fall.

This led to Parkes and many other riders being unable to post any more fast lap-times, and the 33-year-old will now start race one down in 19th position.

A disappointed Parkes said: “We have had the seat set higher recently and as my bad luck seemed to continue this afternoon, the foam slid off so I came back in to get it sorted and was unlucky to be caught out by the condition changing before I could get a lap in.

The plan now is to stay out of trouble in the first race and get a good result and then fight on again in race two. We have shown that we have the speed and it is all about performance on race day. This year so far I have had more than my share of bad luck so I am hoping we have our share of good luck tomorrow.”

Both riders will have one final chance to find their ideal set-up for the two races during tomorrow morning’s final warm-up session at 09:15.

Race one is scheduled to get underway at 13:30, with the final race of the day due to start at 16:30.

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About author
Josh is a Sports Journalism graduate and has been a member of the TCF team since 2015. Between 2015 and 2018, Josh focused primarily on British Superbikes and Road Racing events such as the Isle of Man TT. At the beginning of the 2019 season he became the MotoGP Reporter.
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