Honda Racing’s Dan Linfoot has improved his pace on the all-new 2017 Fireblade at the MCE British Superbike round at Brands Hatch Indy, and this was evident to see, compared to the times clocked at the opening round at Donington Park.

At the first round Linfoot was nearly 30 seconds off the pace of the leader, now that has dropped to around three. His team have been working hard between the rounds and conducted two test days, one at Cadwell Park and at Mallory, and their extra effort definitely came to fruition on race day.

Linfoot ended race one in fifth, and sixth in race two and came away from the Kent track with a total of 21 points - which is a much better finish on the Fireblade than he had a mere 12 months ago at the circuit.

The Cadwell Park test was not successful, but improvements were made at Mallory. For Linfoot there are still areas for development, which include having more control over power delivery.

“We have improved the pace from Donington, and we had a couple of tests between Donington and here which gave us the direction to go in and we have followed and we are both able to ride the bike as we could last year now - which is a good start,” said Linfoot, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“It has put us back to how the bike felt last year which is good but we have still some areas to improve, and some control to be had over power delivery, and wheel spin and wheelieing. It is probably a better result than last year, so I think we got going last year after this round. I feel like I have given my best and I am fairly happy, it is a step forward.

“We want to be fighting for podiums. We went to Cadwell which was a disaster and then we went to Mallory Park for a test, which was so much better which was good and we made improvements.”