Brookes: The only focus is wins now

Josh Brookes says given the ‘disappointing’ progress to his 2018 Bennetts British Superbike championship his sole focus remains on victories between now and the end of the season while he won’t consider a conservative approach to reach the top six spots at Silverstone.

Despite having appeared to found a key breakthrough at Brands Hatch in July with a dominant double, followed up by another victory in race two at Thruxton, Brookes remains fourth in the BSB standings and in the thick of the fight to secure a top six Showdown spot.

Brookes can mathematically book his Showdown place in the opening race of the Silverstone triple-header if he isn’t outscored by Danny Buchan by five points or more and Christian Iddon by more than 13 points.

Rather than concentrate on the race-by-race permutations, the 2015 BSB champion is solely focusing on wins to reignite a title fight against runaway leader Leon Haslam.

“I have no interest in looking at the points before the weekend – all I want to do is win races,” Brookes said. “The only thing I am focusing on is trying to do what I do every weekend and that is bring the bike up to a level where I can be competitive against the guys out on track.

“I need to win, that is it and that is the fact of it. I am not trying to salvage points, not trying to think about what I need to do to get in the top six, I am past all that and I literally just want to win races.

“It has been a disappointing season so far. I think you can only really understand the situation if you are a part of our team and it would take a novel of thoughts to bring everybody up to date on how things are ever changing and the circumstances that bring certain results.”

The BSB Silverstone round will be run on the National circuit layout following safety concerns over the resurfaced Grand Prix track which saw the cancellation of last month's British MotoGP.