Pole man Josh Brookes pulled no punches as he lashed out at fellow Be Wiser Ducati rider Scott Redding’s tactics after the former GP rider grabbed a tow in qualifying.

The Australian, who dominated action in Q3 with a lap almost a quarter of a second faster than anyone else, took a sideways swipe at his PBM compatriot after the championship leader tagged onto his tail in a bid to clock a fast one.

“I’m surprised that a guy of Scott’s level feels the need to follow me around,” Brookes smiled. “I gave him the one in Q2 and made him work for himself in Q3, but Brad Ray was quite clever and snuck in there at the right time to get a tow, too.

“I wasn’t aware, but it makes a change instead of Scott being there. It just mixes it up, it means the front row for the race tomorrow is going to be more interesting for the fans to watch the racing.

Brookes lapped under record pace during the Thursday test in Lincolnshire to bolster his standing as one of the favourites for victory this weekend.

And he went even quicker this afternoon with a 1’26.219 to take pole 0.224s ahead of Buildbase Suzuki’s Ray.

But he admitted it was a bit of a battle to get back to his Thursday pace after weather played havoc with early proceedings at Cadwell.

“I’m more pleased probably for this than people imagine. I’ve been quite fast all weekend – I went well on Thursday and we did 26.4, which was a good marking point, and then I struggled to get back to it.

“We made some changes to the bike and we tried to find some new settings, but it didn’t prove to be very good so we went back to what we knew and then it was just up to me and I was really struggling to make the bike go where it needed to go.

“But 18 laps of the track is going to be very difficult – it’s a very physical track. Hopefully I can get a good start and try to control the speed of the race, but I might have to just play it lap by lap and see who else has got race pace.”