Factory Kawasaki man Tom Sykes has hinted he may have been landed with a duff tyre in the first World Superbike outing at the Nurburgring yesterday as race simulations with the softer Pirelli compound didn't see the massive drop-off in performance he experienced.

The Huddersfield man, who closed the gap to series leader Max Biaggi, said that he had done two race distances with the rear and was able to stay in the 1'55s until the end, whereas in the opening race, the performance fell off a cliff and he was relegated back to fourth place.

“There is a question mark over race one because we used the same kind of tyre that we had used all weekend, the softer of the rear tyre selections, and we have done race distance on two of these tyres. On each occasion we have been able to do 1’55 laps at the end of the simulated race. So it is very strange today. We did 1’55s very comfortably at the beginning of the race then we had a massive drop in tyre performance," said Sykes.

"It was rear chatter but more like bouncing today and that is something we have never experienced with this bike, let alone this weekend. We made a tyre choice change and went to the ‘B’ rear, which we were not keen to do. Things could have been much better. Some other riders had a worse day than us so I am quite happy to take good points in each race. A difficult day but we pulled points ultimately we cut the championship lead a bit. We will keep working hard for more good finishes.”