Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes led both World Superbike races today and battled hard to try for the win, but each time he lost out to Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty. Huddersfield’s finest has learnt a lot from this weekend and vows to improve for the next round.
Sykes was 3.4 seconds away from the victory in race one and only 1.7 seconds from double race winner Laverty in race two. But crucially, at this advanced stage of the year, Sykes beat his closest rival Aprilia’s Sylvain Guintoli each time and he now leads him by eight points, gaining seven points on him this weekend.
It was the first time that Sykes has been out on the Turkish track, and felt that he improved from the first to the last race, and that was down to some changes to his Kawasaki.
“Two podiums today - even though it was the first time for me here. We had only two-and-a-half hour’s track time against two top riders who have previous experience of this circuit. We made two or three changes to the bike between races and I think everybody saw that our bike was working a bit better in the second one,” said Sykes.
“We started that race quite strongly and I was able to lead again but some of our competitors were using the tyres a little bit better, so Eugene Laverty was able to catch me. Unfortunately I did not have the package at the end of the second race to fight back and try to win it.
“I believe that we can learn and improve from this weekend. I wanted to win in race one as well; I pushed hard but I feel if I pushed any harder I may have overstepped the mark. The changes we made this weekend should help for the future races. We are leaving with an improved points lead and that can only be a good thing.”