Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes has extended his lead over rival, PBM Kawasaki’s Shane Byrne in the MCE British Superbike Championship by 28 points after doing the double at Assen. For the title fighter it has happened at a ‘crucial point’ in the season and is pleased to have an advantage over the quadruple-champ.
This afternoon Brookes overcame the difficult conditions to come away with his ninth win of the year. In both races he held off advances from fellow Showdown rider, JG Speedfit Kawasaki’s James Ellison to take the win, not once but twice at the Dutch track.
“It’s not just the double that’s good, I’ve done that a few times now, but to do it now at the most crucial point and with all the crazy things that have happened, especially last year there was a lot chaos for me that didn’t go my way. This year too I’ve had plenty of situations thrown at me but together with myself and my team we have done the best we can and come out shiny the other end,” said Brookes.
“It’s really pleasing to have this lead over Shakey now; a lot of the racing I have done in the middle of the season had very little effect on the championship standings so for the points to matter this weekend makes a real difference.
“I took the holeshot and immediately felt like I was going too slow, everything felt slow motion and I was waiting for people to come past. Then I thought that I’d ride at my own pace unless people came past me, it was very difficult to gauge what speed to go at. As Dan came past, I saw he was on wet weather tyres and he got away quite quickly as would be expected.”
In the final race of the day Brookes was caught in a battle with Ellison, Linfoot, Mossey and Cooper and managed to out-pace the lot of them to take home a total of 50 points for his Milwaukee Yamaha team, and now has a total 578 in the series.
“We’ve seen it many times this year that the depth of field is strong in BSB, any rider that comes past you, you can’t just immediately get them back you have to work hard to do it. I found it difficult to get past straight away but once I did I was able to work on my own rhythm and catch James up again.
“I didn’t mean for the pass to be that aggressive but I’m glad he’s taken it in good light. I thought I would be able to make a cleaner move than that but his entry speed was much faster than I anticipated. I’m really happy to bring it home with all these different events going on. I enjoyed the race quite a bit and I hope it was enjoyable to watch.”
