Josh Brookes has admitted his discontent with early progress at Snetterton, but still believes there’s time to bounce back and make a challenge this weekend.

Be Wiser Ducati’s Australian missed out on a front row start by just over a tenth of a second while team-mate Scott Redding scorched to pole, and the 2015 champ will now have to start from fourth on the grid for tomorrow’s first Bennetts British Superbike race.

But Brookes believes lost momentum in Scotland last time out caused he and the PBM squad to take a different turn with the setup in Norfolk yesterday.

“Knockhill has really damaged our progress,” he revealed to Bikesport News. “We went to the Knockhill test and that kind of planted a few seeds for where we wanted to go with the bike because of the problems there.

“Then we went to Brands and made some changes off the back of what we learned at the test and it worked, so we were like ‘ah we’re onto something’. We went to Knockhill last round and progressed further, but Knockhill was a hard weekend and we’ve come here and struggled.

“Now we’re going back the opposite way, more like what we had at Oulton Park earlier in the year and that seems to be a better direction.

“It’s a bit frustrating for me because I’m trying as hard as I can every time I’m on the bike and I don’t want to make excuses. If you’re looking for excuses you’ll find them – I don’t want to do that, I want to just be positive and keep working on the setup.

“We’ve just had real irritating setbacks this weekend which haven’t allowed me to feel right on the bike, I haven’t been able to progress yet and it’s just put us on the back foot.”

While the former champion hasn’t exactly hit the ground running at Snetterton, he feels he’s turned a corner after qualifying and if he and the Be Wiser squad can set out a strong plan of action for race day, he believes he could be in with a shot.

“What’s frustrating is that I’m not even close to my personal best, I’m a long way off. But I feel like that last session was a big step in the right direction and the information we’ll have gathered from that session will actually be more valuable than the rest of the weekend has been combined.

“It’s not completely over, we can bounce back tomorrow but we’ve got to have a really structured evening tonight.”