Sterilgarda Yamaha's Tom Sykes is making "drastic changes" to the way he works with his team and to the way his YZF-R1 is setup in order to try and improve results for the next World Superbike round at Misano.

The likeable Huddersfield man is currently seventh in the championship and, in any other year, that would be a good place to be as a class rookie but unfortunately he has fellow rookie Ben Spies as a team-mate.

"It’s been quite a difficult weekend with a couple of things but the team and I have sat down and put our heads together and we’ve made a drastic improvement to the set up and the way we work, we’re going to be stronger as a team and I’m confident I can now repay the team and deliver the goods.”

“We still had some issues with the bike and obviously the starting position didn’t help matters much. We got off the line fairly well in race one but got boxed in on turn one and lost position a bit. A difficult first race but the red flag helped me re start further up the grid and I managed to run some consistent race times.

"For race two we made a bit more of a change and found another half a second which was good and had a good start. In the first lap I came from 22nd to 14th which was pretty good."