Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 8, 2013 P71 Briefly... SYKES TEES IT UP Tom Sykes stretches his championship lead with a sweep of Magny-Cours BY GORDON RITCHIE PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE T om Sykes has a favorite way of riding and it is to hit the front and stay there. No matter what is going on behind him. When his tire lasts and his set-up is good enough, he just ticks off the laps, races his pit board and breaks lap records for fun. He did all these things at Magny-Cours in the penultimate round of the 2013 World Superbike series, not once but twice, and in doing so pushed himself fully 37 points clear of his nearest rival. The next nearest rival is 38 points away, but whatever way you count it, Sykes' lead is, if not unassailable, then certainly unlikely to be usurped unless something radical happens at Jerez at the final round. "It is nice to have 37 points advantage, but it is still not 50 points," said Sykes. "It is never enough - but I am enjoying the moment of course. It is certainly a better cushion of points than when we came here, so you have to look on the positive side. In race two I was able to hit every apex and it felt safe, so overall I am quite relaxed and this is a good position to be in." Each race was shortened at Magny-Cours, the first to 18 laps and the second to 21. The first was stopped when Mark Aitchison crashed his Pedercini Kawasaki and it caught fire while on the track. The second was due to warring Aprilia team riders Eugene Laverty and Sylvain Guintoli, the pair riding so hard that they didn't notice that the track had gotten wet at one corner on the last lap. Both fell, comically, one after the other. Guintoli lost the front as he couldn't see the rain on his visor because of all the flies, and Laverty said the same about his lack of track reading as With Leon Camier still out of action, the Fixi Crescent Suzuki team went full French at the Magny-Cours round, bringing in experienced Endurance racer Vincent Philippe to their team alongside regular team rider Jules Cluzel. He had recently been crowned World Endurance Champion at the recent Le Mans 24hour race, and he went ninth after a wet Superpole, putting all of his track knowledge to good use. Michele Pirro provided the second dose of Italian talent inside the Ducati Alstare team at Magny-Cours, instead of the still injured Carlos Checa. He was a confident ride on the big vee-twin, going tenth in regulation qualifying, only 1.112 seconds from the fastest. He was a former World Supersport rider for the Ten Kate Honda team, so the paddock is no alien territory for him. Although there was a small influx of French riders to the World Superbike starting line-up at Magny-Cours, one notable local name was missing again – Kawasaki's Loris Baz. Still recovering from a fractured D4 vertebra, he had to sit out the MagnyCours round and that allowed David Salom to eschew his regular ride with the Kawasaki Intermoto Ponyexpress team to take his second consecutive outing on the official Ninja ZX-10R. Lorenzo Lanzi reappeared in the World Superbike paddock on a 1098R supported by Mesaroli Transports, a freight company from Italy. At the scene of one of his most impressive World Superbike race wins, Lanzi was 14th in regulation qualifycontinued on next page

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