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STRONG END TO A CHALLENGING WEEKEND FOR DAO RACING

The seventh round of the 2025 British Superbike season was held at Cadwell Park. Gabrielle Giannini would once again join Josh Brookes, the Italian filling in for the still recovering Lee Jackson.

Having to go through Q1, Josh Brookes would narrowly miss out on making it through to the superpole shootout. Brookes would line up for the first race in sixteenth on the grid. A crash in free practice three meant that Giannini was forced to miss out on setting a lap time and would thus have to start from the twenty-third position.

The opening race of the weekend would see a strong recovery from both riders. Josh Brookes put in a strong performance, pushing through into the point-scoring positions in twelfth. Gabrielle Giannini was able to fight through to eighteenth on his debut at the Lincolnshire circuit.

Monday morning’s sprint race would see more points for Brookes, who again made progress up the grid, crossing the line in eleventh and securing five important points. Giannini was unfortunately unable to finish the second race of the weekend.

Josh Brookes would be the sole rider for the team in the third and final race of the weekend. After spending much of the race fighting for a top ten position, Brookes crossed the line in strong tenth place, just off the back of the fight for sixth.

Despite the weekend getting off to a trickier start, the team was able to make progress throughout and secure a strong haul of points, including a top-ten result.

The next round of the 2025 BSB season heads to Donington Park, where Josh Brookes was able to secure a first podium finish for the team earlier in the season.

The team will be back in action on the 5th of September.

Josh Brookes, Superbike Rider:

‘It was a real emotional rollercoaster here this weekend. I started out on Friday quite strong in the first session. We obviously had the extra test, so a four-day weekend, and I started out really strong in the top three position, but as time went on we didn’t really progress like the rest of the group and slowly dropped down some of the positions. That sort of trend continued into the weekend, we got to qualifying and struggled even further, just missing out and not being able to match my previous best time and missing out on a good qualifying opportunity. So, we went into the first race, we again continued to make changes with the bike, but nothing that really showed great promise, then unfortunately yesterday’s race we struggled with a low grip issue. Overnight everyone got their heads together and tried to fight our way out of this hole and fortunately for the opening race today we did make a good improvement, the bike was better. Obviously starting back down the grid is quite damaging to the results, but we did get a slightly better lap time in the opening race today and got a better grid position in the final race. Also, with the changes we made overnight, we were able to fine tune from race two to race three and got an even better feeling on the bike and moved up for a final finish of 10th position. This is actually quite a good result considering where we’ve been through the weekend. We just have to except the position we’re in and keep progressing moving forward.

At Donington the bike has been a lot stronger, the natural layout of Donington is more flowing, it doesn’t have any bumps, so a lot of the time we’ve been working on the bike we’ve been trying to work on making the bike more compliant over the bumps, it seems like a very rigid feeling from the bike and every time we make it more compliant we then lose grip. At Donington it is a high grip circuit, as in recent years it’s been resurfaced, so the problems we’ve had in the past don’t really show so much at Donington, so we’ve got a stronger package there. But, throughout what we’ve learnt, this weekend particularly, we’ve definitely found a bit of grip in the final race, then hopefully with the bike working better at Donington and the improvements we’ve made this weekend, if we’re able to couple those together we might have a really interesting race at Donington Park.’   

Jonny Bagnall, Team Manager:

‘It’s been a testing weekend here at Cadwell Park. It started out strong at the test on Josh’s side, although a bit excited on Gabriele’s side, when learning the circuit maybe a little too exuberant and put it down the road. The boys did a great job getting it back out and finishing the test with Gabriele and Josh finished strong.

Starting the weekend in FP1 and FP2 I think we had a good start and finished with a decent lap time to end the day. As the weekend went, on Josh’s side we struggled finding the direction with the bike, there were a few areas he was struggling and just couldn’t seem to get the lap time, but we’ve worked hard trying to change a few things and find what he was looking for and he has progressed well towards the end, although I don’t think the results reflect that, more in the lap time and the consistency as well.

On Gabriele’s side, after another two crashes he missed out on race three at the end of the weekend. Which was unfortunate for him, he has brought a lot of positivity to the team, his attitude has been great and it was a shame to see him go out like that and we hope to see him back soon.

Going into Donington, I think we’ve got a lot of work to do. Obviously, we can’t be too complacent as we got a podium there, but I don’t think that reflects where we are with the bike. We’ve work to do, we’ve learnt a few things with the bike this weekend again and yes we have to factor all of this in this week’s work load in preparation for Donington.’   

Article collaboration: DAO Racing + https://motomindfulness.home.blog/