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Phillip Island WSBK: 12th ‘a beautiful result’ for Brookes

Josh Brookes has declared his 12th place in the second Phillip Island WorldSBK race a ‘beautiful result’ after a broken head gasket almost put him out of contention in Australia today.

Brookes’ ERMotorsport-EliteRoads.com.au discovered the problem after morning warm-up and had just a couple of hours to strip and re-build the BSB-spec Yamaha R1 motor, completing the task with just five minutes to spare before pitlane opened.

The Bringelly rider managed to net some decent points after a scrap with ex-MotoGP star Stefan Bradl, Roman Ramos and the BMW of Markus Reiterberger on a bike that was down on power and suffering a 20km/h top-speed deficit.

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“It’s a beautiful result. Yesterday, we blew a head gasket and the excess pressure blew a water hose off but last night we thought it might have been a broken clamp so we put it back together, went out in morning warm-up and the pressure built up again, so that was evidence the head gasket was gone,” said Brookes, speaking at the track.

“We didn’t have a spare engine to go to. We had to make do with what we had, so we stripped the engine, took the head from the engine we broke in testing on Tuesday, used a second-hand gasket with three-bond on it, winged it with the torque settings and it was up and running with five minutes to go.

“We gave it a quick look around, made sure there was nothing leaking and it ran perfectly. That is what made today special. You’d think this was a multi-million dollar team with the best mechanics in the world.”

Here is a time lapse of the in-garage panic:

Click here for times and results

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