Josh Brookes and teammate PJ Jacobsen do battle at Silverstone.

Josh Brookes will enter this weekend’s British Superbike Championship final at Brands Hatch without a chance at the 2013 title, a mechanical at Silverstone forcing him out of title contention.

His first mechanical retirement for Tyco Suzuki during race one in almost two seasons put a halt on Brookes’ BSB title aspirations for the Northern Ireland-based team.

Brookes took fifth place in the second encounter, however his title bid come to an early conclusion now 58 points behind series leader Shane Byrne.

“I’m disappointed again,” Brookes said. “In practice and qualifying I had some chatter issues that didn’t really go away, although they certainly got better in the races, which is a positive.

“Our general package wasn’t just quite good enough to compete at the front this weekend. It has been before, but for whatever reason, we’ve either lost some pace or I’ve lost some form – or the other guys have just found extra performance from their machines.

“At the minute I just can’t match what I’ve been able to do in the past. Race one was out of my hands, but in race two, PJ wanted to get ahead of me, and fair play to him, but it created a gap and once you lose that draft on the front guys, then the race for the podium is over really.”

Team manager Philip Neill was also disappointed to see their title challenge come to a premature end.

“We are obviously very disappointed to see our championship aspirations virtually come to an end for 2013 here at Silverstone,” he said. “Although if I’m honest, I think we had a very steep hill to climb in terms of our championship hopes, with the damage having been done in previous rounds.

“It’s never nice to see them end with a ‘DNF’ for Josh, but we have to be realistic and say that we never really challenged the front-runners for pace all weekend. For whatever reason, Josh seems to have lost some pace in recent rounds and it’s something we need to address before Brands Hatch.

“It’s been a long, hard season for Josh and he’s had some fantastic races both in BSB and on his road racing debut this year on GSX-R machinery. Unfortunately we’ve fallen that little bit short with our championship challenge this year again. All we can do is re-group as a team and come back next year and go again.”

Brookes sits fourth in the standings entering Brands Hatch this weekend.