Hometown hero Josh Brookes managed to cut his gap to leader Jonathan Rea on the overall timesheets to 1.8s on the second day of testing at Phillip Island despite losing the morning session with a broken engine.
On the first lap of action today at the entry to Lukey Heights, Brookes felt the engine on his BSB-spec ERMotorsport-EliteRoads.com.au R1 go tight and then as he started to open the throttle, he heard the telltale rattle.
“We dropped the oil out of it and there was a load of gold material in it,” Brookes told bikesportnews.com. “That engine is out and that looked to be the better engine. We had our preferred engine in the bike already.
“We went out on our spare engine and it ran without a glitch. I set about trying to do some decent lap times or the best that I could do. We made a few changes to the bike and it did improve.”
Lap-by-lap Brookes is getting closer to the front men with a best of 1’32.396. The gap is less than two seconds now and it was nearer three yesterday evening.
“I’m fairly happy with the afternoon session, as we did make good progress. In saying that, the bike is not perfect at the moment. Setup for Phillip Island is quite unique and what we had coming into the weekend just doesn’t perfectly match.
“We can’t genie more horsepower out of it. So we will just have to manage with what we have got. But I think the general setting of the bike and how it is working with the tyre can be slightly improved.
“We will look at trying to make some changes to fix some of the problems. They are not big problems. They are not areas where I am going to make seconds a lap up. But a couple of tenths here and there with the new improvements could be a good step forward. We will just work from where we are.
“Compared to everybody else, we are already a full session down, which is probably the main negative. We can only improve with the time we have got and the material we have.”
