Max Cook

It's one of the great journalism clichés spotting the next hot new prospect in racing

- ALAN OF DOWDS

And in some ways you can't lose: if you get spotting the next hot new prospect in racing. And in some ways you can’t lose: if you get it right, you spend the next few years crowing about your soothsaying skills... if you don’t, you just never mention it again.

Sometimes you can be quite relaxed about a prediction, though, and that’s definitely the case here, we reckon. Max Cook is a 19-year-old racer from Swindon and has quite the bio. He’s been racing since he was just six years old, and comes into 2023 as one of the new riders to watch in BSB. After winning the Junior Superstock 600 title last year on a Yamaha R6 for the Binch Racing X Uggly & Co team, he’s swapped to a Kawasaki ZX-10R with the factory-backed Cheshire Mouldings Kawasaki team.

But his record goes back to riding in the Junior World Championship Moto3 on a factory Honda in 2019, following stints in Red Bull Rookies MotoGP Cup, British Talent Cup and BSB Moto3, going right back to the Aprilia Superteen championship in 2015, with Metrakit 70cc and Minimoto competition before that.

We spoke to Max just before the first round of BSB over the Easter weekend and it’s fair to say that he was sounding pretty excited. How were things going for him?

“Really well. We’ve been over to Spain and done quite a lot of laps in testing. I know it’s a massive step up, coming from Superstock 600, but I feel like I’m ready for it and I’m definitely up for the challenge. I’ve gelled with the bike quite well; it feels like a proper race bike, feels really good, and it’s more like what I’m used to. Because I’ve grown up on race bikes with slick tyres and so on, it feels much better to race than the stock 600.”