Australian road racing received a boost of sorts this week as Josh Brookes confirmed he will be coming home in a one-off Australasian Superbike Championship (FX-ASC) appearance in Sydney next weekend, riding with SA Kawasaki BCperformance.

Although the top Australian racers are now in the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), it will still be interesting to see Brookes back home on the unfamiliar ZX-10R. Especially considering teammate Robbie Bugden is on par to clinch the title.

Source: Supplied.

Brookes was able to do a shakedown at Wakefield Park on Thursday with the SA Kawasaki BCperformance team, so he won’t be entering next weekend completely unprepared: “Thank you to SA Kawasaki BCperformance and their sponsors for making the effort to get me out at Wakefield yesterday. We maximised the track time, riding every session and we tried a lot of changes.

“I’m now familiar with the package I’ll be riding at Sydney Motorsport Park next weekend and although the setup we found today won’t be so important, it’s good to have tried a range of options. This will surely make it easier to find a direction at the race and I can now look forward to the next time I get to ride the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R.”

Brookes is yet to formalise any ride for 2017 at this stage, which is astounding considering he was BSB champion just a year or so ago. It’d be amazing to see him come home for a year, but the word is he will head back to Europe and try pick something up whether it’s at the start of the season or later in case of injury or something. His time’s not up yet.

Bugden and company are no slouches by any means and we’re expecting them to be on their game with the added excitement of Brookes, so it should make for an intriguing finish to the season. It will also be interesting to see who remains in FX-ASC for 2017 out of the top guys.

News came in earlier this week that Brayden Elliott and Sam Clarke are headed to Britain with CF Motorsport and we wish them both well. Being teammates – Elliott in Superstock and Clarke in Supersport – will be ideal for them and it will be an interesting gauge to see where the current crop of young Aussies stand internationally.

Image: Keith Muir.

If the opportunity is there and they’re not on factory teams over here, you can’t blame these guys for having a crack overseas and they’ve shown plenty of potential here. It won’t be easy, especially as rookies, but they will be putting in 100 percent that’s for sure. A small, selfish part of me also would have liked to see them in ASBK though!

And just today, it was made official that Mike Jones will be joining the Aruba.it Ducati Junior Team for 2017 in the European-based Superstock 1000 Cup, while Aiden Wagner is on-board with Team Lorini Honda in World Supersport – the team Glenn Scott was with this year. Great news for those guys!

Aside from those topics, it’s been a relatively interesting week news-wise here and internationally. With Christmas flying up upon us, there’s been no real slowing down just yet and we don’t really expect it to all the way up until Christmas eve.

Anyway, that’s it from me for this week, thanks for stopping by as usual! Make sure you check out all of CycleOnline.com.au’s social networking channels and be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for even more behind the scenes insights. Just search CycleOnline.