Milwaukee Yamaha’s Josh Brookes made a setup breakthough during private testing at Cartagena on Saturday, switching weight balance to the rear of the new R1 in order in increase corner-exit grip.

Brookes, who had to contend with two days of patchy weather before getting one dry day, managed a 1’33.7 best lap on the bike after discovering that a more MotoGP approach to balance and eight transfer was the way forward.

After a couple of days of bad weather, we managed to get a full dry day but the track was covered in sand. You could see lap after lap shiny trails where the tyre had cleaned it off - I know what the guys are talking about at Qatar now,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“We made our most positive progress with rear grip but we had to take a very different approach to get it. Last year, I was almost running into the back of guys trying to keep my speed high in the middle of corners. With the new bike, we learned to use its MotoGP inheritance, I guess,” said Brookes, speaking to bikesortnews.com

“The new bike is different than the old. It needs to have the rear loaded on corner entry in order to keep the grip through the turn and out the other side. We discovered we don’t want a lot of weight transfer front to rear.

“That means although I carry less speed mid-corner, we can achieve some impressive lean angle with more grip through and out the corners, plus we have gained braking efficiency which will combat the Kawasakis.

“The laptime I set wasn’t world beating but I was pleased as the track was extremely dirty from two days of rain and the bike has a lot more development parts to come. It is starting to fit together nicely.”