Endurance: Tyre choice halts Brookes’ charge

Josh Brookes and the Yoshimura Suzuki team’s charge in the Suzuka 8 Hours was halted too early on by a mistake in tyre choice, according the Australian after the race.

Speaking exclusively to MCN, Brookes admitted that his decision to rely on the softer option tyre available to them meant that he was left at a disadvantage when track temperatures rose higher than they had all weekend.

“I feel like I’m maybe a little responsible, because in my first stint the tyre that I got the benefit from during practice didn’t work. It was the softer one, and I was going to use it in my stint and they were going to use the harder one because they were in short supply.”

And, with the chance to put pressure on the Team Green Kawasaki squad in front of them lost, he admits that any chance of moving higher than third went out the window as well.

“It’s slightly disappointing, because I wish we could have put more pressure on the Kawasaki guys. Sometimes, you’ve got to force a mistake, not wait for them to make it. A lot of mistakes made by other teams during the race were because they were under pressure at the time.”