McAMS Yamaha rider Josh Brookes says it’s vital he stays in the podium scrap in both of this weekend’s Bennetts British Superbike Championship races to stop Leon Hallam’s domination.

Brookes, who qualified second for tomorrow’s opening race, is feeling happy this evening after making improvements to his machine over the course of the day.

 “I am pleased with that actually,  this weekend we haven’t been setting the fastest pace through the practices so to make a bit of good a lunge forward at the end of the practices and then back it up in qualifying was quite good,” he said.

“The main thing for me tomorrow is to try and stay in that podium fight. Leon has sort of taken control of the last five races so we need to put a challenge up to him so I’ll do as much as I can.” 

However, he admits he is unsure as to how well he can fare over race distance.

“Starting from the front row is a good spot to give us a chance and we’ll see how our race pace is,” he added. “I don’t know how it’s going to stack up in the race. I was trying to take a bit of a risk to do it there, I think everybody was.

“I think the race pace is going to be quite a bit slower than that but it’s going to be tough. This track is very small and short but it’s very physical and repetitive and quite challenging but it’s the same for everybody. We’ll see tomorrow.”