Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes got to within 0.106 seconds of the World Superbike pole position at Sepang, finishing second in Superpole two and earning himself a start from the front row of the grid. Now the reigning champ hopes he will be able to use his tyres to good effect, especially when it comes to race distance tomorrow.

Sykes had a solid perforamance on board his Ninja ZX-10R in Superpole two, on a qualifying tyre, but was not quite able to take his 21st pole position. With no points available for qualifying the series leader understands that the real job starts tomorrow, as he goes for more wins to add to his 2014 season tally of four so far.

“We have been quite consistent all weekend and on race tyres we are there or thereabouts. I feel we have learned something in the Superpole laps so we will hopefully put that to good use tomorrow,” said Sykes.

“We were not too far away from our competitors and the times have been close, but we will try to work even more to improve the race set-up. I have seen how fast some other riders are on new tyres but everyone will take a drop on raceday as the race unfolds.

“Exactly how much of a drop, no one will see that true potential until tomorrow. I am hoping that we can be in quite a good position tomorrow for race distance and we just need to improve the general feel to utilise the bike a bit better in some corners. I hope we can make any small changes count.”

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