Josh Brookes squeezes into Showdown - could he still yet defend his BSB title?

Josh Brookes remains in with a shout of the 2021 British Superbike Championship title after sneaking into one of the eight Title Showdown spots with his best performance of the season at Silverstone.

The Australian - a perennial front runner ever since his debut back in 2009 - has endured an unusually uncompetitive title defence on the VisionTrack Ducati and had spent the entire season outside the top eight.

However, at the final time of asking, Brookes would creep into the final spot after a determined run to third place in the final Silverstone race that nudged him ahead of OMG BMW’s Bradley Ray by just four points.

It means that though Brookes would find himself 258 points down on Jason O’Halloran under a conventional scoring system, instead he starts 69 points down on his fellow Australian under the equalised plus podium credits format.

It gives Brookes a sniff at turning things around for a third BSB title despite this weekend being his first podium results of the year.

“That third race was a lot more hard fought so I'm proud of our efforts. In the earlier race, to get mugged at the end was a bit of a downer.

“I ended up in the same position in race three, but I feel a lot better about it. I raced from a position, we had the stoppage and then in the restart I got a good start for once! I had a good battle with Tommy [Bridewell] as well. All around it's been positive.

“I actually didn't know Danny [Buchan] was there too on the last lap, I just saw Tommy come past and I didn't want to give up the position. I didn't know where other people were in the race and potentially losing another place would've meant I may have been out of the Showdown.

"Last time we were at Oulton Park I had a lot of problems getting performance, but we seemed to make some good changes to get the bike up to the speed we’re at now, but if Silverstone is a gauge, this is a track we've normally, not sucked at, but not particularly gone good at! 

“So if this is an example, then maybe we'll go good at Oulton Park too. I'm as curious as anyone to find out so we will see what happens in the Showdown.”