Australian Josh Brookes will enter next month’s Phillip Island WorldSBK opener as a wildcard, riding the exact same Yamaha R1 on which he won the 2015 MCE British Superbike Championship.
Brookes purchased the R1 from Tommy Hill’s team - who had bought the bike from Milwaukee Yamaha - for old friend and ex-racer Deon Coote in Melbourne and had it shipped Down Under. He will run the R1 under ER Motorsport colours for the ride before it is used as a trackday weapon by its new master.
The Bringelly rider wants to get the answers to some questions that have arisen in his head over the course of last year’s disastrous season with Milwaukee BMW and feels this is the best way to get them.
“There’s a question in my mind, and probably a lot of other people, about how would I have got on in WorldSBK on my championship-winning BSB bike, so this will answer the question of where I would finish, so I want to find out,” Brookes told BSN.
“Last year was a disappointment but I want to tell the people that rest assured, that wasn’t a demonstration of how fast we were at the end of 2015. Some people might accept that is how it is and BSB guys aren’t good enough or whatever.
“I was the one sat on the bike last year and have the experience, and I want people to know that last year was a different set of circumstances.”
The bike will be more or less as it left Brands Hatch at the end of 2015 aside from a different set of electronics as the BSB-spec Motec units are not legal for WorldSBK, so will be skipped in favour of a kit system from Yamaha.
“The rules state we have to change the bike’s electronics to YEC as we aren’t going to spend hundreds of thousands to use Magneti Marelli, so it will be the kit stuff. We’ve got a variety of people helping out. The idea came up when Deon said he wanted to buy the bike. I did the organising, the middle man stuff you’d call it and then he said that if we are having that level bike shipped here, it would be a shame not to race it at least once. I said I was definitely willing to do it as a collaboration, Deon had a budget and we worked on getting other sponsors together.”
Brookes plans to test at Phillip Island on January 30 before returning to the track for the official WorldSBK tests in mid-February where he will see how the BSB R1 stacks up not just against the works Pata bikes, but also the rest of the field and his own former team Milwaukee and their new factory Aprilias.
