Technical problems hit Benelli in qualifying.

Minor technical problems held Peter Goddard and the Benelli Tornado back in qualifying for the European round of the World Superbike championship at Brands Hatch.

The team entered the WSB championship to develop the brand new Tornado Superbike, and knew it would be tough. However, they also knew that racing would bring many valuable lessons. It's proved to be every bit as hard as they expected and, at each round, the team has been given plenty of experience.

After the elation of scoring their first championship point at the last round in Laguna Seca, Brands Hatch returned the team to reality as niggling reliability problems blocked rider Peter Goddard's efforts to qualify for the Superpolen session, and left the Australian 27th on the timesheet after final qualifying.

"We've been experiencing problems that we hadn't expected," commented team owner Andrea Merloni, "But we came to Superbike racing for experience and that's exactly what we've been getting. Some of the problems we've had this weekend have been unexpected, and we will have lots of work to do after this weekend. But we are achieving exactly what we came here to do, but I hope we can score more points on Sunday."

Peter Goddard remained upbeat about his chances in the race, despite the frustration that he encountered in qualifying.

"The aim tomorrow is to finish and score some more championship points," he said, "Our lap times on race tyres here have been almost as fast as when we put the qualifying tyres on, so that's encouraging for tomorrow.

"We have a good base setting for the Benelli now and we haven't had to make too many changes from the set-up we ran at Laguna. This weekend our problem has been engine reliability. I had an engine failure in both qualifying sessions which cost us track time, and that's important with a new bike. The bikes are running consistently high rpm at this track, so it's hard on the engines around here. There is also a lot of hard braking.

"Hopefully, we have better reliability in the races because everything else is working well. Since we first raced the bike at Misano there hasn't been a lot of time for development, especially with the travel getting to America and back. After this weekend, there's a longer break, so we are looking forward to trying some new things later in the season to keep improving.

"I think we can work our way forward in the races tomorrow, like we did at Laguna, and hopefully we can be in the points. As usual British wildcard riders are going fast on their 'home' track so if we get in the points it will be a very good result. The weather has been hot and the surface is a little more slippery than usual, but I love the track. Although there are still a couple of places where the barriers are too close for comfort, Brands is a rider's circuit and a lot of fun to race on."