Scott scorches to Brands Hatch pole

Be Wiser Ducati rider Scott Redding scorched to a remarkable pole position at round four of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch today.

The Be Wiser Ducati duo showed superb form throughout the free practice sessions on their respective factory-supported Be Wiser Ducati Panigale V4Rs and headed into the Datatag Extreme Qualifying in confident mood having set the first and second fastest times overall, Scott the quicker with an impressive lap of 1m 25.196s which was 0.283s faster than his team-mate.

Despite some dark clouds, the entire qualifying session saw dry conditions and both riders comfortably progressed from Q1 where they again occupied the top two places at the top of the leaderboard. On this occasion, teammate Brookes was quickest although the gap between the pairing was just 0.029s.

With 18 riders going through to Q2, it was still a tightly packed field, but Brookes signalled his intentions early in the 12-minute session with a 1m 25.105s putting him quickest. It was enough to see him hold onto the top spot and with former MotoGP rider Redding in fifth, they were amongst the leading nine riders to go through to Q3 and contest the pole position.

The final eight-minute session saw the lap times drop even further and Scott was the first to post a sub-1m 25s lap of the weekend with a time of 1m 24.971s. Brookes almost matched him with his own lap of 1m 24.978s but the red flag came out shortly afterwards and with it restarted over just four minutes, no one was able to improve and so the Be Wiser Ducati team took the top two places on the grid.

Scott Redding:
“I’ve really enjoyed my time at Brands Hatch so far and have gelled with the circuit quickly. Learning the new tracks now isn’t as difficult as it was as I feel more confident after my wins at Donington. Things have started to fall into place and I’m really happy to get the pole position although I was struggling a bit in Q2 where I didn’t want to make any mistakes or use a new tyre too early. It looked like the rain was coming so we put the tyre in and although it was close, I managed to get pole. It’s great for the team to have a 1-2 and it looks, potentially, like the battle will be between Josh and myself so hopefully we’ll have a bit more pace than the other riders and be able to get away in tomorrow’s races.”