Brands Hatch (UK), Thursday 2 August : World Superbike comes to the natural bowl amphitheatre of Brands Hatch this weekend with four rounds remaining in this year's series and four riders on four different machines still in with a chance of taking the title.

The Brno round two weeks ago shuffled the Superbike deck of cards, in particular for two-times world champion Troy Bayliss (Ducati Xerox), who slipped from second to fourth after a difficult weekend. Troy now lies 11 and 13 points adrift respectively from Haga (Yamaha) and Biaggi (Suzuki), but is also required to make up a more worrying 56 point gap from leader Toseland (Honda), with 200 points still available.

Brands Hatch, situated on the outskirts of Britain's capital city, is the jewel in the crown of World Superbike and always offers spectacular racing to 100,000 strong crowds and with a British rider leading the championship at this point of the season, more of the same is guaranteed this year.

Troy Bayliss, 4th in championship (249 points)
The 38 year-old Australian rider has a good record at Brands Hatch, having scored two wins, four 2nds and two 3rd places there. Last year, kitted out in Superman-themed leathers, he shared the wins with Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha).

"Normally I've always had a good time with Ducati at Brands and last year I did a good job as well. It seems the track layout is good for us and it makes for good racing so I'm confident. Haga, Corser and Toseland will be the guys to watch out for this weekend but I expect Haga to be very strong because Yamaha have improved the bike a lot this year. At Brands there are a lot of ups and downs and corners where you can't see, so most of the set-up work comes from just spending a lot of time on the bike. There's a big dip at the end of the straight where you have to set the bike up differently because you're braking there. It's really hard on the front end of the bike and you have to come up with a setting that's hard enough to cope with that but still comfortable to ride. You have to come up with a happy medium basically for Brands Hatch".

Lorenzo Lanzi, 6th in championship (150 points)
Eighth place is the 25 year-old Italian's best performance at Brands Hatch, a result which he achieved twice in 2005. Lorenzo currently lies in sixth place, 41 points behind Corser, but his position is still under threat from Xaus (Sterilgarda Ducati).

"I've always liked the Brands Hatch track, even though I've never had any good races here" explained Lorenzo. "It's full of ups and downs, very spectacular and also a bit dangerous. Having said that, I'd never gone well at Monza either and this year I managed to do so, so it's time to change things here at Brands as well. Ruben and Rolfo are close to me in the standings but I am counting on getting ahead of Corser. There are still 200 points up for grabs and my main aim now is to get fifth place in the final standings".