BMW Motorrad’s Tom Sykes took two goes at Barcelona to secure his latest WorldSBK Superpole success and extend his all time greatest tally to 51 Superpole wins.
In Catalunya, in the dry conditions, the reasons Sykes could set the inevitable new track best of 1’40. 408 at a circuit with a revised Turn 10, was simple. Rear grip from the Qualifiers, that make his bike work they way he needs it to.
“When I put the qualifying tyre in, I can just revert back to a bit more of my natural style,” said Sykes. “I can ride around some of the limitations on the bike.
“Without sounding arrogant, it is really quite easy for me to manage the bike in those laps. Physically my input is less than on a race tyre. It’s just mentally it’s such a pleasure. I can just relax. I can pick out my braking marker. If I chose I want to delay my apex or have an apex earlier, I can do it. For me, we went into Superpole with a slightly different setup to yesterday. We said, ‘well, we’ll try it’, and on the second Q we’ll try the other setup. I did the first one and I thought that was my insurance lap. I said to Ian, ‘don’t worry. Don’t change it. Just change the tyres and I’ll have another go’. Honestly, I knew the lap was already good, but then when I started the second Q tyre, I could just see I was improving corner by corner. Again, just such a pleasure from the feedback from the bike.”
At Turn 13 Sykes seemed able to take a wide line that would have had all his rivals on the green paint, then whip the bike up onto the early part of the kerbs and avoid the perils of the green, and getting the power down faster. He agreed, and said it was noticed by someone close to him, already.
“To be honest, my crew chief has said the same,” said Sykes, “He’s been telling me I didn’t look to be sliding and didn’t look to be doing like you just said. But honestly, for what everybody wants to say about me, I still believe that I’ve got some good advantages to my riding style.
“There’s also a little bit of discipline when it comes to the throttle application with the Q tyre. There’s areas where you want to use it and areas where you need to pull back and not use it, because it’s easy to upset the balance of the bike. That’s one area you just mentioned, is that without going and giving too many trade secrets away, you’ve got to kind of understand where you can use a Q tyre. There’s certainly different approaches you can take, but like I said, for me, that last sector is classic. People can argue that it’s a flowing sector, but people would argue that that’s not my kind of track. But when the chance comes, I can adapt and react accordingly. So I enjoyed the last sector, all on the edge of the tyre, just being able to pick it up. Like you said, I didn’t abuse the last two corners. I seen my teammate as well really suffering in the dry conditions. He was a bit like me on the race tyre. Lacking a little mechanical grip. But like I said, with the Q tyre, it just instantly fixes some problems for me in general. Entry, mid, and exit.”
Starting from pole, Sykes felt his race was compromised early on by that position because of the rain and the track paint, or other on-track surfaces.
“That was a complete disaster if you were on the front row,” said Sykes. “There’s basically almost the width of this table of painted something across the track. So, pole position is the worst because you only have one meter, and then I arrived to all the paint. But you’re on full torque, so the tyre just spins. I had to close the gas twice. Both times when I re-opened it, it spun. It was complete shit. My RPM went. To be honest, I even wanted to start outside of my box because on pole position the bike starting box, basically when you put your axle to the line, your rear tyre is sitting on the paint from the car racing box. So, pole position was a disaster. I was going to go outside of the box, and I thought, no. Someone is going to say something if I go to the left of my box. But to be honest, the second or third row would have been much better. At least you would have gotten the bike rolling. Across the line, because I was only going five kilometers per hour, I spent a long time on this white. 15th into turn one…”
Launch control, as it is know elsewhere, is not quite the same in WorldSBK according to Sykes. “Launch control is a big term here in Superbikes. For me, you have a bit of a false limiter and a little bit of power reduction, but the rest is really quite manual. But what I can say, the bike does not expect a massive… The rear tyre just goes at full speed and the front tyre is doing nothing. When I tried to get away the bike was not very clean… I think it just thought, what’s going on? I just can’t believe it. It’s a hell of a long way to turn one.
“Even in the first couple laps, I felt really confident with the wet setup of the bike. I think I could have made much, much more progress in the first laps because after a few laps, everybody looked to settle down a bit. So, big disappointment. Looks shit on paper, but it is what it is.”
