DAO Racing have rounded out their 2026 ZYN British Superbike pre-season programme in a productive fashion at Oulton Park, following two days of sun-kissed action at the Cheshire venue, where both Josh Brookes and Lee Jackson continually improved their base set-ups ahead of the opening round of the season on May 2/3/4.

Perfect conditions blessed the 2.6-mile circuit for the final two days of pre-season testing, allowing both Josh and Lee to complete 169 laps combined around the undulating Oulton Park.

Day one would see the pairing work closely with their team to fine tune their packages, making progress with the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade across the three, hour long, sessions.

Brookes would end the day 11th on combined times, posting a best lap of 1:34.880, with Jackson sitting four tenths back in 15th, after notching up a 1:35.233.

Day two once again saw the team make a raft of changes to the packages of both riders, with Lee making progress immediately in the opening session of the day and improved on his personal best lap time of the test.

The afternoon sessions proved to be challenging for the pair, with Lee facing a small technical issue in his final run, and Josh experiencing a small crash. However, after sterling work from Lee’s side of the garage to get his bike repaired, he would improve once again in time, posting a 1:34.723 on his penultimate lap, to leave him 13th in the combined standings, with Josh 15th.

Josh Brookes: “I hoped that our final day of testing would prove to be fruitful in the way of cementing our final arrangement of changes, and that we’d be content with our work as we enter the opening round.

“However, I feel like a lot of the changes we made sort of danced around the problem, not really improving the package that we had from day one for example. I didn’t get a chance to improve my lap time, I did crash in the process, so it proves we’re pushing to the limits, but we are still trying to find the best out of the bike. There are areas we can improve the package, we have made good steps in the run up to the final day, but I just think we’re missing that final touch.

“It’s not all doom and gloom, it’s just a little bit of a reality check for me, the next time we’ll be on the bike is at round one, we do have a little bit more work to do to try and understand where we can be a little more competitive. I can’t thank the team enough though, they’re working hard with me to find a solution and I’m sure we’ll be able to come the first race.”

Lee Jackson: “It’s been an interesting testing programme for me this year that’s for sure, we started off in Spain with a new crew chief and I’ve had a new data engineer at this test as well, so that has been tricky to work around, but I feel we’re in a good place with that now, we’ve gelled well and we’re working hard together.

“All in all our testing has gone well from my point of view, I’m not the best during tests, I get a little bit impatient and I can get easily frustrated, but we’ve actually made a lot of progress and got a lot more consistency from the package, and myself. I haven’t achieved the lap time I was expecting here at Oulton Park, I was a little bit off the fastest lap time, but I feel like we’re on the right path now, and that gives me a lot of confidence heading into the first round. We’ve got some great ideas already to help us improve the bike next week, and I can’t wait to get back out on track and start the 2026 season with DAO Racing.”

Team manager Jonny Bagnall: “The final day here at Oulton Park has brought our pre-season testing to an end, the team has been working really hard to try and improve the package we have, we’ve stuck to a rigorous programme that we put in place throughout both our Spanish and UK tests. We’ve refined the packages well, we’ve made small and big changes to improve the feelings from the bike that riders are comfortable with.

“Most of the steps we’ve made have been positive, albeit small, but we have got both bikes in a good working window. We’re about 95% of the way there, the other Honda teams seem to be in the same place as we are.

“We’ve got a plan to improve ahead of round one and we’re excited to get racing now.”

The team now has 10 day break before returning to Oulton Park for the opening round of the 2026 ZYN British Superbike Championship on May 2/3/4.