Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes out-paced his team-mate Loris Baz to take a thrilling victory in the opening World Superbike race of the day at Donington Park.
The Yorkshireman snatched the lead from the French rider and on the final lap rode on ahead to take the first win of the afternoon in dry conditions. Voltcom Suzuki’s Alex Lowes rounded off the final step of the podium.
At first it was Aprilia's Sylvain Guintoli who got the hole-shot, only for Lowes to nick first place at the Old Hairpin. The Frenchman went down to third with Baz edging on ahead to take second. On lap three Guintoli went on the inside of Lowes to take the lead into Coppice. Lowes went slightly wide and that enabled Baz to squeeze into second.
On lap five Baz went into first at the Old Hairpin. But a lap later two Brits crashed, first it was Alstare’s Christian Iddon on his Bimota BB3 Evo bike, who fell at McLeans. Seconds later Voltcom Suzuki’s Eugene Laverty fell heavily at the Fogarty Esses.
By lap seven Guintoli fell off the pace and Lowes was able to take advantage and slotted back into second, just behind Baz. Pole-setter Giugliano also made a more on Guintoli and went into third - which stuck going into Coppice to push Lowes back to second.
Elsewhere there was a British battle for sixth place between Sykes, Pata Honda's Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam and Ducati's Chaz Davies, with the reigning champ setting the pace, lapping a second faster than his team-mate who was leading the field.
But on lap eleven Sykes pulled away from Rea and had a one second gap between the Northern Irishman, and soon had Melandri as his next target. Sykes went inside of the Italian to go into fourth at the Old Hairpin and set the quickest lap of the day so far – a 1’28.914.
Giugliano was about the make a move on Baz to go into the lead put crashed at Fogarty Esses, but Sykes wasn’t giving up that easily and managed to get inside the slip stream of Lowes at the Dunlop Straight to go into second.
On lap 19 it turned into a Kawasaki duel for the top step of the rostrum with Sykes knocking two tenths of his lap time to catch up with his younger team-mate, and at Goddards went into first, only for Baz to retake the lead into the Old Hairpin. But that was only to last mere seconds as Huddersfield’s finest went into lead going out of the Melbourne Hairpin, and on the penultimate lap pulled off ahead by 0.9 seconds, and powered on ahead to take the win.
In the mid-pack battle of the Brits it was Welshman Davies who got the better of Rea, with Guintoli sandwiched between the Pata Honda bikes, with Haslam finishing his home round in eighth. Red Devils Roma’s Toni Elias and David Salom rounded off the top ten, with the Kawasaki man also taking the Evo class spoils.
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