Peter Hickman fired a warning shot to his Bennetts British Superbike Championship rivals as he revealed there is still a lot more to come from his Smith’s Racing BMW.

Hickman ended the day third fastest at Oulton Park after banking the second quickest lap in this morning’s opening session and says all the team needed was time.

“It’s been a good day, it’s all just time,” he told Bikesport News. “The bike’s really good and we knew at Silverstone it had some good potential – the problem with Silverstone for us was it only showed our weaknesses and not our strengths. 

“But from that we’ve learnt a lot and the bike’s actually got a lot more grip now than what it had back then. We came here for the test and straight away we were fast which is a good thing -  the bike just gets better and better.

We knew that the bike has got a lot of potential and we’ve still not unlocked that potential yet, it’s really early days.

“It’s still a baby really in comparison to everything else on the grid, even the Ducatis they’ve been using them a lot, they have a lot of back up data to go back to while we have zero so to be this close this early is really surprising.

“It’s just time, that’s what we need. Keep learning, keep trying new things. It’s a bit of trial and error. We’re getting there bit by bit.”