Josh Brookes needs to ride in ‘scary area’ for Isle of Man TT wins

Josh Brookes feels that a step from himself is required to win races at the Isle of Man TT, but that he must go to “an area that’s a bit more scary” to do so.

Brookes returns to the TT road races this year with the same DAO Racing team he will contest the BSB season with. The Australian has had a single 1,000cc podium, that coming in the 2024 Senior TT with FHO BMW as teammate to Peter Hickman.

Now in his second year on the Honda, Brookes is continuing his road racing career that has been stop-start since 2013 with the belief that he can improve, but he knows that to achieve better results he must take more risks – a daunting proposition in a discipline where a mistake can be so gravely consequential.

“I feel like my approach is quite methodical, I don’t take a great deal of risks, and I feel like I’ll only go fast when I feel like I’m in a range or a position where I’m confident to do that,” said Brookes, speaking to Crash.net.

“I feel like that’s probably stopped me from achieving better already. I think that my [...] inner person that’s trying to keep me safe is too strong in my case. 

“There’s often been times when I’ve got to the end of a practice session, or a race week even, and thought ‘I probably could’ve taken more risk, and I probably should have done this better and that better’. 

“So, I feel like I’m always riding on the side of caution as opposed to the side of risk, and at some point, if I want to achieve better, I’m going to have to take that next step and ride in an area that’s a bit more scary.”

Brookes, though, added that his approach will always remain determined by him, not by what other people think the should do.

“I’m not particularly bothered what other people think, I’m always going to have to do my road racing the way I do it,” he said.

“I’m always in the mindset that I hope I can do better, I want to do better, and I know what I need to do to go better. But that self-preservation mechanism seems very strong when I’m trying to do that. 

“I think that the times when – like in that 2013 year, my very first year – I had a bike that was performing, what I thought, well, and against everybody’s comments I didn’t feel like I took a lot of risk. 

“People were saying ‘You’re going too quick, slow down, you’re going to hurt yourself or worse’. At the time I was like ‘Well, this is my first time here so I don’t have anything to reference’. 

“I was actually questioning myself, I thought ‘Maybe I am going too fast, maybe this is what happens: people get carried away and think they can do it earlier than they should and this is when mistakes happen’. 

“But it didn’t happen, and now, having more years of experience, I was actually following my natural intuition. 

“I just felt like I had a bike from British Superbikes, I was actually on my British Superbike Suzuki, and because I knew that machine so well, when I rode it – because I rode that same bike in 2011, 2012, so 2013 was the same model, even though we update every year the model hadn’t changed – [...] I had a very clear understanding of how that bike would perform and operate. 

“That gave me a lot of confidence; even though I was in an area of being new to the TT, I was riding in a range that was fast for the time and kind of defying what people had done before, but I didn’t feel like I was taking a great deal of risk. 

“I think that’s a very key relationship between how I feel with the machine. I think that’s probably one of my undoings: I have to wait until everything feels good before I take more risk.

“But if that’s what keeps me safe then I’m going to go on that mindset rather than just taking unnecessary risk.”