Josh Brookes goes into this weekend’s MCE British Superbike opener at Brands Hatch with a new team, new bike and impressive times during pre-season testing and it has been a smooth transition to the Milwaukee Yamaha.

For the past three years, the Bringelly man had been muscling his Tyco Suzuki through the championship but a winter switch saw him move to the YZF-R1 which most paddock insiders believed would require a change in riding style. Apparently not so much…

“It still has two wheels, handlebars, I am still going to ride it around the corner fast and essentially that is all I am doing. I am hopping on the bike, holding on to the bars and riding it around the corners as quick as I can, seeing the corners as obstacles and when it doesn’t get around that obstacle as good as I want it to, we work at ways to make it easier,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“The Yamaha is indicating that it wants to be a nice flowing sort of bike. It seems to get better lap times when you are more relaxed, whereas with the Suzuki you almost had to muscle it, look aggressive on the bike to actually achieve a lap time. When you take a breath and are almost trying to in-lap, that kind of riding style is when the Yamaha is at its best – you need to be relaxed.

“It is like riding a horse; the horse can tell if you are an experienced rider, if you ride tense, the horse thinks ‘This guy doesn’t know what he is doing, he is riding tense, and I want to buck him off’. The Yamaha is almost in that same category – if you ride tense and aggressive, it almost goes, ‘No you are not going to get that lap time you are looking for, and I am going to punish you for that!’ When you ride it smooth and calculated, it goes, ‘Okay, that’s how I want to be ridden, I am going to reward you with a good lap time!”