Former World Superbike Champion Tom Sykes says he sacrificed pushing for an outright laptime in the second free practice session at Buriram in order to improve his race setup with some new ideas for tomorrow’s opening encounter.
The factory Kawasaki rider didn’t carry out a race simulation like team-mate Jonathan Rea but looks to have the pace to run high 1’35s laps. However, the track will get quicker as time goes on, so the Huddersfield man’s setup work could pay off.
“We have quite a good setup. We were just trying two or three things in the last part of the second session and sacrificed lap time for this. Now our questions have been answered for tomorrow so we know where to go on the setup and then we need to focus on pace. In the last ten minutes we kept the same tyre on the bike and tried some new things. We can go to sleep and know with 98% certainty what bike set-up we will go with in the race tomorrow.”
