Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes certainly made up for his ‘poor start’ as he was able to power through to take the World Superbike race one win at a cloudy Portimao this afternoon.

The Brit did find it difficult leading the rest of the field when the rain started to fall in parts of the circuit, as he was aware that some sections of the track had less grip than others. But the racer has thanked his team for their help, and even though he fell off the pace slightly when the rain set in, he was able to take back one second to bag his seventh win of the year so far.

Sykes is adamant that improvements need to be made to his Kawasaki going into race two, as he was struggling in some areas –  and he hopes the final race of the day doesn’t get hit by changeable weather conditions.

“I enjoy winning races, and I am fairly happy at the moment. We had a poor start but we had a 20 lap race and it is long enough to make corrections. I was happy and we had a good pace but then the rain came,’ said Sykes at the track.

“I am currently leading the championship and I didn’t want to do anything stupid, but it was difficult to calculate the grip in some areas, as it was raining in some parts more than others.

“The Kawasaki team gave me a great pit board and luckily the cloud disappeared with a good number of laps left to go. We need to look at the bike for race two and to make improvements as there were some areas that I was struggling in – but I am sure everyone else will try to improve too.”