MCE INSURANCE BRITISH SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 07 SUNDAY 22 JULY BRANDS HATCH PREVIEW LAVERTY POSITIVE AS KIRKHAM EYES ACTION REPLAY OF OPENER Michael Laverty is aiming for winning rides in the weekend’s seventh round of the 2012 MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch to consolidate and build on his fourth place in the overall standings while his Samsung Honda team-mate Jon Kirkham needs an action replay of his opening round triumph at the Kent circuit to kick-start his campaign. At the Easter Monday first race of the season it was Kirkham who came out top, marking his debut with the team with a winning ride while Laverty tumbled in the treacherous wet conditions, but in subsequent races it has been a reversal of fortunes with Laverty coming on strong while his team-mate suffered a major set-back with a high-speed crash at Oulton Park in May. Laverty, with two winning rides amid four podium finishes at Snetterton and Knockhill, has comfortably taken a place among the top six who will go forwards as the “title-fighters” in the final quarter of the season, but the competition is intense and the Ulsterman is intent on more winning rides, racking up both points and also podium credit scores. The team completed a highly successful test at Assen immediately after the second visit of the season to Oulton Park and while that was primarily geared to learning and obtaining data at the Dutch circuit ahead of the visit of BSB there in September, it also gave the team and riders the opportunity to iron out any issues they experienced at the Cheshire circuit. Laverty, after a tumble in the first of the three races there, came back strongly with two top five finishes while Kirkham had difficult time with crashes and bike problems, scoring only two points, and dropping him to fourteenth in the standings and with a big fight on his hands to secure an all important top six position by the end of the ninth round at Donington Park. Kirkham goes into the races on the full Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit 49 points down on the current sixth placed rider, former World Superbike star Noriuki Haga and he realises that now is the time to re-kindle the form he showed back in April by adding big points scores to his tally in the remaining races and that is not going to be easy. He will be challenging experienced riders, among them the four times BSB runner-up Chris Walker and fellow Honda racers including Thruxton race winner Ian Lowry who needs to find some consistency in what is proving a difficult campaign. That is also the case for the three WFR Honda riders James Westmoreland, Alex Lowes and Graeme Gowland. They are all ahead of Kirkham and fighting for a place among the elite top six. Heading the points going into this round is Yamaha’s reigning champion Tommy Hill who took his race winning tally for the season to five with a hat-trick at Oulton Park with Suzuki’s Josh Brookes and Kawasaki riding former two times title winner Shane Byrne completing the top three. HONDA RIDER QUOTES: Michael Laverty (Samsung Honda) Championship position 4th “I’m looking forward to Brands Hatch and getting back to where we were at Snetterton and Knockhill. At Oulton Park we got closer to the fast guys in what was a damage limitation exercise at a circuit I am glad is now out of the way. I enjoy the Brands Grand Prix circuit. It is fast and flowing and one that makes you work hard. I won there last year and was the fastest guy on the track then, so I am eager for more of that. I’m in the top six and pretty confident that I can stay there. I need to score more podium credits, it is pretty clear what we have to do, and then we are in a strong position to fight for the championship.” Jon Kirkham (Samsung Honda) Championship position 14th “I’m going to Brands Hatch with good memories of my first round win and I also had a podium finish in the last round of last season so now I am eager to use those experiences to put the bad luck of last time out at Oulton Park behind me and to move on. Some of that was down to me not being on it for the rounds after my crash in the first visit there, but then the nightmare of circumstances, crashes, niggling problems have put me on the back foot. Positively, we tested at Assen after that last BSB round and that was very good, putting in 60 laps in all conditions and we will be using that to roll out at Brands Hatch and be straight on it.”