EPayMe Yamaha’s John Hopkins made his debut aboard the ex-Josh Brookes R1 he will campaign in this year’s MCE British Superbike Championship today at Cartagena and said he is already loving it.

The former MotoGP man put in three sessions at the Spanish track as a shakedown with the new bike and says it already feels like a proper race bike and that fine tuning is already all that is needed.

“The first outing was basically about getting rider set-up, the entire morning we have done three timed laps due to the sessions, but within those I really love the bike - I absolutely love it. It feels like a proper race bike. There were a few minor adjustments we had to make in the morning to sort out levers and footrests and things like that but the actual bike itself feels amazing; the power delivery, the chassis, the only thing I can remotely compare that to is back riding the latest version I rode back in 11/12 on the MotoGP bike,” said Hopkins.

"The way it feels and the rigidity of it, I felt riding last year's bike I had the quote that it felt like a proper race bike. To me, this feels like even another step and such a nice proper race bike. I feel there are a lot of things that can be done from where we are at now at this point, which is really good. We can fine tune and adjust to suit each track with more time but my initial feeling is really, really good."