Brookes accepts black flag ruling

Josh Brookes says he won't dwell on his exclusion from the second MCE British Superbike Championship race of the day at Cadwell Park after paying the price for a costly warm-up lap error.

Having already firmed his place in the 2014 Title Showdown for the fifth season in succession, Brookes came into the race weekend seeking more podium credits, but was already on the back foot after problems in qualifying consigned him to tenth place.

A determined fight back hauled him up the order, but only enough to fourth place, but while his efforts earned him a front row start in race two, a slip at the bottom of the Mountain on the warm-up lap would see him fall foul of the 'no restart' rule handed down to prevent fallers from rejoining with potentially damaged bikes.

Indeed, though Brookes did get going again to take his place on the grid, he was subsequently handed a black flag, which he had expected.

"I am not dwelling on the day too much. It is a bit like in qualifying, we had some bad luck, but you know what's done is done and there is no use thinking too much about it as you can't go back in time and fix it. What annoyed me the most about it was race one because I rode as hard as anyone else to get as high up as I could and I don't get anything to show for it as I am already in the Showdown.

"Race two was completely wet and the conditions were known, but the setup we had just wasn't competitive enough and I crashed on the warm up lap, so that shows that something was wrong. To explain myself, I know there is the rule that you can't restart after a crash, but because it was a warm up lap I thought I would pull up on the grid and see if the rule applied at that point.

"I thought it was no good rolling into the pits and then have a moment when the team yell at me saying what you are doing when you could have lined up on the grid or something. I knew if I wasn't meant to be there I would be told and then I was black flagged. I hadn't felt confident so that's the weekend over, I have forgotten about it and now we get back on to the next one."

With key rival Shane Byrne scoring a pair of second place finishes, Brookes is currently 21 points in arrears in terms of podium credits with just a single round left before the Title Showdown begins.