After an eight-year gap, Josh Brookes made a successful return to the North West 200 with third and fourth place finishes on the MCE Ducati in the Superbike races, positions which he felt were more than positive given the lengthy absence.
Fastest in the opening qualifying session gave outsiders the view that the former double BSB champion would be firmly challenging for the race wins but the Australian felt that Thursday’s qualifying session would always show a more accurate position of where he placed. “After a few years away from the roads, the first few laps were quite breathtaking and intense, but I was soon at ease again,” he said. “Once they were out of the way, it was just a case of getting on with the job and being bike racer again whilst I was quickly up to speed in Tuesday’s qualifying session, I knew the pace would quicken on Thursday. We got to a certain level pretty quickly but then levelled off whilst the other riders made greater gains.” Indeed, whilst Brookes improved by two seconds in the final sessions, other riders improved by five, six and seven – some by even more than that – which resulted in him qualifying in eighth place.
The nature of the short practice session meant there wasn’t much time to make any significant changes whilst competing in just the one class also meant his track time was limited. “We only made small improvements between sessions compared to other riders and with a relative lack of track time, especially with not riding in any other classes which perhaps worked against me, we weren’t able to fully try all the changes we made. That meant we went into race day still working on setup.” However, the work Brookes and Paul Bird’s team did certainly improved the Ducati package and
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