VisionTrack Ducati's Josh Brookes netted decent points in the opening Bennetts British Superbike outing at Silverstone today but suffered in the early laps.

Starting from second, Brookes battled early doors but a lack of confidence to push the Panigale V4R saw him drop to ninth before fighting back to an eventual sixth.

“That was a tough race and definitely not where we wanted to be. I didn’t have the confidence early on to push like I needed to so lost a few places which compounded the situation," said the Australian.

"I’m just lacking confidence in the bike in the early laps which leaves me vulnerable but that gives me lots of work to do later in the race when I get into a rhythm.

"But that’s no good in a race and we need to improve early on. I need to find speed in the last sector as the rest of the lap is ok but, in this series, you can’t give the opposition a head start. We plan some changes in warm-up to hopefully give us that tiny bit of what we are missing.”