Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes dominated the World Superbike qualifying session and bagged his fifth pole position of the year, and did it in spectacular fashion. He has back-to-back championship wins on his mind and in his words was going ‘for full glory’ and pulled a super quick 1’36.366 out of the bag - pulverising his own outright lap record in the process.
The Brit overcame a slow speed fall in the final free qualifying session to go out in the second Superpole session, and take a convincing pre-race lap. Already the third best rider in pre-race qualifying over the history of the WSBK championship Sykes took a 24th career Superpole win today, which means he is now only two away from equalling the tally of legend, Troy Bayliss.
“I always ride a little bit reserved with a race tyre in Superpole, especially with the one bike rule in place. My target today was very clear, however. It is always to get onto the front row at every race, but today I wanted to go for full glory,” said Sykes.
“As soon as I put the qualifying tyre in the Ninja ZX-10R was working brilliantly. All of a sudden we were able to put the bike where we wanted on the track a bit more easily and the new best lap time came relatively nicely.
“I was pushing, of course, and the bike was moving, but at the same time it was working well. Because of that I am very happy.”
