Reigning Bennetts British Superbike king Josh Brooked left the Oulton test yesterday fifth on the overall timesheets but gathered valuable data on the Pirelli SCX tyre.

The new-to-BSB slick is a softer-compund rear that has been put to good use in the WorldSBK Saturday sprint races and could well be used as a qualifying tyre should track temperatures allow.

Brooked was also able to evaluate the state of the finger he injured at Silverstone which kept him out of action at the Snetterton test.

"The day was positive in as much as the finger injury didn’t really affect me, but regarding the actual test, I felt the track was a little slower than last year as it hadn’t been used very much," said the Australian.

"We put last year’s settings into the bike and straight away I was fastest but then we tried a few different things, including the new SCX tyre, and the changes didn’t really help us go faster.

"I learned a lot about the new tyre which was one of the main objects today so that information was invaluable. But we know we have a good base setting on the bike and these tests are to experiment a little but the whole idea is to evaluate our package. Even though I wasn’t fastest overall, I’m happy with where we are at and we got plenty of dry laps in.”