Why road racing doesn’t ‘hinder’ one star’s BSB commitments

Josh Brookes says he is “completely the opposite” of his former teammate, Peter Hickman.

Both Brookes and Hickman began road racing in the 2010s, Brookes making his first trip to the Isle of Man TT in 2013, while Hickman went for the first time a year later.

By 2023 they were teammates at FHO BMW, although they’d achieved their respective major success by that point in different places.

For Brookes, the success had come on the short circuits, winning BSB titles in 2015 and 2020. Hickman, on the other hand, had become the most formidable rider of that period on the roads and especially on 1,000cc machinery.

Brookes, too, had continued to dabble in road racing, but only intermittently. It wasn’t until moving to FHO three years ago that he began to make multiple years in a row of road racing, and this year’s edition will be his fourth in succession at the TT.

One of the aspects of road racing that is quite particular to it as a discipline, and particularly to riders like Brookes and Hickman within it, is the month of May.

This makes it sound very IndyCar, but why May is unique to riders who contest both short circuit racing and road racing is that it is a month that requires multiple switches between disciplines.

The first BSB round is on 3–5 May this year, for example, and practice for the North West 200 starts on 6 May. A week after the North West concludes they are back on track at Donington for the second BSB round, and then the TT starts eight days later.

It’s a complicated period of time and one that expose imperfections in a rider’s ability to switch from one to the other.

It’s in this aspect that Brookes feels he and Hickman differ.

“I find quite easy to go from road racing back to short circuit,” Brookes explained, speaking in an interview with Crash.net.

“I feel like if there is any disadvantage it’s going from a BSB race into a road circuit race because it takes such a different discipline of riding. 

“I was teammates with Hicky [Peter Hickman] and he said he found it the other way, he could jump on the roads and be up to speed straight away, yet it took him a while once he got back to BSB to get back in the rhythm. 

“I’m completely the opposite. 

“So, I think it’s actually probably a good thing that I’m not hindering my BSB by doing the roads stuff, but it just means that I won’t be P1 in the first session at a roads event, I’m sort of a more slow builder.

“But [...] if that’s what keeps you safe, that’s a better option than the alternative.”