Josh Brookes made a return to Australia last weekend (5\u20137 December) to race the St. George Motorcycle Club\u2019s Summer Night Series.<\/p>\n
Brookes raced the same series in the BSB<\/a> off-season last year, and returned this year on a Honda CBR1000RR-R prepared by the DAO Racing team he rides for in Britain.<\/p>\n Victorious in Race 1, Brookes finished second in the second outing before crashing out of the final race. It meant he finished the weekend fifth overall, while Moto2<\/a> rider Senna Agius won the second and third races to win the round overall<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brookes explained that, although the bike was prepared in the UK by DAO, there were still some things for him to adjust once he got hold of the bike.<\/p>\n \u201cI picked up the flight case from the transport company on Friday lunchtime and brought it home to unpack the bike sent over from the DAO Racing team,\u201d said Brookes.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cIt isn\u2019t my British Superbike, it is a bike the team have put together in Superstock spec for British Championship or Australian Superbike spec, which mirrors the Superstock we have in the UK.<\/p>\n \u201cI did have a few things to alter and adjust on the bike when I got it, and give it a check over and change over the tyres for practice, put brake pads and discs in for racing and just general preparation for getting it ready for the following day.<\/p>\n \u201cThe following day we had a few practices where I tuned the electronics a bit for myself as I knew what I wanted from last year and the same with the suspension where I made a few adjustments to put it to where I was happy with the bike from last year, as this bike is very much like the one I built for myself last year for the winter. I just didn\u2019t have the burden to have to do that whole process again.<\/p>\n \u201cI went into the evening with the qualifying and then three races. I did the minimum number of laps in qualifying because I wanted to carry the tyre over into the first race. I think that is what most people on the grid do for this: use two rears and use one for qualifying and race one and the other for race two and three.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking about the races, Brookes continued: \u201cI qualified in third which I was pretty happy with as I didn\u2019t do many laps. Race 1 I got a poor start because the bike didn\u2019t start in the same manner as my British Superbike would and I hadn\u2019t practiced any starts and it took me by surprise a little.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI followed JJ Nahlous for quite a few laps as he was leading and I made a pass on him and then he passed me back, then on the final lap I positioned myself to do a slipstream manoeuvre on the finish to take the win.<\/p>\n \u201cRace 2 I started with a new tyre and had good grip from the bike and it was performing well; I got a slightly better start, but Senna Agius passed me on the Ducati. I did attempt to line up for some passes back but it wasn\u2019t successful so he finally won the race and I was second.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the third race, I got a little bit better start, but because of the hard battle I had in race two, I had used up a lot of the tyre, so carrying that same tyre into race three, I felt like I had really penalised myself and I didn\u2019t feel as strong as I had in the previous races.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was taking a lot of risks to try and make up the ground that I had lost in the opening laps, whilst I was trying to adapt to the bike not performing as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI was making good progress, I had lost a lot of ground to the first three, and then I was closing up slowly and I had just got to the back of Glenn Allerton in third and unfortunately lost the front.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI had used the same front tyre for the whole evening, so I think, in the future, I will swap the front tyre between races one and two, so that I have more grip from the front.<\/p>\n \u201cIn any case, it was me that was taking the risks on the brakes to make up the lost time, that caused that crash I believe. I am perfectly fine and have no injuries but the bike was pretty rough looking when I got it back, so the next race is on 9 January, so I have time on my side to get it repaired and back in order so I am looking forward to the return then.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Brookes made a return to Australia last weekend (5\u20137 December) to race the St. George Motorcycle Club\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,26487,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-339409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-british-superbikes","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}