Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes was unbeatable out on the track today and smashed the Superpole lap record he set last year, with an impressive 1’27.378 lap time. But the Huddersfield rider did not have the best start to the final Superpole session at Donington Park this afternoon, when he made a mistake on his first lap.

Sykes pushed hard on the tyres for his second and third time around the circuit and went top of the timesheets to claim pole position in the World Superbike race tomorrow.

“I made a big mistake in the first lap of Superpole three and luckily I was able to do a better lap on the second lap with the tyre, which is not normal, but honestly I dug deep and even my first lap was good enough,” said Sykes, speaking to bikesportnews.com from the circuit.

This is the Brit’s fourth pole position start of the year, and is already starting to rack up a collection of Tissot watches, and Sykes is wondering what to do with them all.

“I gave plenty of my watches to the team last year, but this year we are starting a small collection of watch already, overall it is the racing that counts, but I am looking forward to tomorrow.

"I am relaxed and the good thing is the ZX10R is working well over the race distance and I am confident that we have got a good and consistent package for tomorrow so we will see. We just need a good clean start and the rest should not be too bad.”