Top Ten For Brookes As Sykes Lucks Out
A day which promised so much for the MCE Ducati British Superbike Championship Team ended with Josh Brookes scoring a battling tenth place finish in today’s opening eBay sprint race at round seven of the series at Cadwell Park.
The Aussie double BSB champion continued his battle with set up issues on the MCE Insurance and factory-supported Ducati Panigale V4R and started the race from row six of the grid. But the race wasn’t to last long as an accident at The Mountain brought out the red flags on lap two.
In the restart, Brookes battled with a host of riders on the fringe of the top ten and in the end, was rewarded with a tenth-place finish to keep his slim hopes of making the Showdown just about alive.
For teammate Tom Sykes, it was a day of frustration having shown his best form of the season so far for Paul Bird’s Lake District-based team. The Yorkshireman, making a return after 14 years to Cadwell Park, worked his way into the Omologato Superpole competition and ended up setting sixth fastest time on the MCE Insurance Ducati to give him his best start of the season on row two.
The ex-World Superbike champion was circulating towards the front when a rash move from rival Danny Buchan had them both on the grass at the Hairpin but not long after, the race was stopped due to the accident.
The restart saw Sykes again towards the front and showing good pace when he was taken down at Mansfield Corner by Christian Iddon with just two laps to go, ending his promising race.
Josh Brookes: “After the difficulties we had in qualifying, a top ten position is an improvement but, understandably, there are no hurrahs in the team. We still have a load of work to do, and we need to find some further improvements to get us to where we need to be. It was good to be racing with riders who have had wins and podiums, and I enjoyed jumping the Mountain, but I’ll keep working and feed as much information back to the team as I can so we can try to improve tomorrow.”
Tom Sykes: “It turned out to be a very frustrating day as I seemed to have a target on my back. Firstly, I got taken wide at the Hairpin and then in the restart, I got sideswiped by another rider so the least said about it the better as he’s since been penalised. People need to remember it’s Cadwell Park but it’s so frustrating as we had a reasonable set up for most of the lap, I was just losing out in the last sector. But we’ll dust ourselves down and go again tomorrow.”
Bennetts British Superbike Championship Sprint race (15 laps)
1 Bradley Ray (Yamaha)
2 Rory Skinner (Kawasaki)
3 Danny Buchan (BMW)
4 Jason O’Halloran (Yamaha)
5 Tommy Bridewell (Ducati)
6 Peter Hickman (BMW)
10 Josh Brookes (MCE Ducati)
DNF Tom Sykes (MCE Ducati)
Championship Standings
1 O’Halloran 344
2 Ray 332
3 Jackson 219
4 Skinner 219
5 G Irwin 199
6 K Ryde 177
12 Brookes 94
14 Sykes 75
Pictures courtesy of Double Red: Josh Brookes (25) and Tom Sykes (66).
