Brookes claims first pole position of the season at Oulton Park

2015-05-03 14:35
Josh Brookes claimed his first pole position of the 2015 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship season at Oulton Park, lapping under his own existing record to celebrate the Milwaukee Yamaha team’s first pole on the new YZF-R1.

Brookes had been building momentum in the dry conditions to move 0.014s ahead of his closest rival, Tommy Bridewell and is now feeling confident ahead of tomorrow's two races. Parkes will start from the sixth row of the grid as he continues he learn the challenging Cheshire circuit. The Australian is determined to fight his way up the field in the two Bank Holiday races.

Josh Brookes
P1: 1m:34.946s
"I am really pleased to get my first pole position of the season. It is always something you want to achieve, and it isn't always the most crucial part of the weekend, but it is a nice feather in the cap. I am a bit surprised to get pole as during the earlier sessions both Kiyo and Shakey have also been there and I expected them to pull something special out in qualifying.

"We have had to change out set up a bit where the track conditions have been changing we had to alter the bike a bit, so we have been putting the pieces together. We made some changes before qualifying and it really felt like the bike I was looking for.

"It felt like quite a clean lap in Q3, so I was happy considering the conditions were changing. These guys are all so close - it was point nothing in it and it is obviously going to be really close in the races too as all of us on the front row can do the lap times and Shakey and Kiyo won't just disappear, so it is going to be as I predicted - a good few of us in for the battle."

Broc Parkes
P16th: 1m36.315s
"To be honest I wanted better today and I wanted to be in the top ten. In hindsight it looks a lot worse because we haven't had a lot of dry time, so we went straight into qualifying in the dry and I didn’t really have the pace.

"This is one of the most difficult tracks on the calendar to learn according to lots of people, and even though I was 1.2s off it put me back a fair bit. Tomorrow I need to have two good races and I think I will get stronger and fight in the first laps to get as many points as possible."

Source: Yamaha Motor Europe N.V.

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