Foggy Petronas Racing riders Steve Martin and Garry McCoy today made an encouraging start to this weekend’s eighth round of the Superbike World Championship at Brands Hatch.

Steve, with a best time of 1:28.318, finished the first qualifying session in 11th place but just 0.3 seconds off sixth, while Troy Corser set the fastest time of 1:27.123.

Garry, recovering from elbow and back injuries sustained in the previous round at Brno, was 20th but just a fraction of a second outside the provisional Superpole positions.

The morning session was hampered by wet weather, with riders using a combination of wet, intermediate and slick tyres. Steve and Garry finished 9th and 20th respectively in the first hour.

Garry said: “My elbow gave me a bit of grief this morning but I changed the taping for the afternoon and will probably try another cushion for tomorrow. It doesn’t feel too bad on the bike, but I can feel it a bit in the right-handers. I also had a massage on my back and shoulders between sessions which helped. Considering we were unsure about whether I could ride this weekend I was pretty happy with the day and I am confident I can make up the two tenths currently between me and Superpole. It would have been nice to have been up to speed on a better race tyre before going out on the qualifier, but we wanted to use the qualifier early in case it rained. We have some more work to do on set-up and the gearbox and, depending on the weather tomorrow, we will also probably try a couple of tyres.”

Steve said: “It was a good start to the weekend and it’s always a good sign when I can do consistent times. It was also a good day for testing the bike in different conditions - dry, intermediate and wet. The dry afternoon session went pretty well and I was able to do some reasonable times on race tyres. We didn’t change the base setting too much but I had a slight problem with the running of the bike and if we can solve that overnight then we will able to improve further. I made a mistake on my first lap on the qualifier so I feel I can get into the 1:27s tomorrow.”