WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP
OFF ROAD
ROUND 5/MAY 25, 2014
DONINGTON PARK/DONINGTON PARK, ENGLAND
P66
BY GORDON RITCHIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
T
he slings and arrows of the
2014 World Superbike Cham-
pionship got slung very hard
towards the green area of the dart-
board once again this weekend. Not
once but twice.
Like in Aragon a few weeks before,
Kawasaki's Tom Sykes and Loris Baz
went 1-2 in each dry race of the day
– and Sykes now has 18 career vic-
tories in World Superbike with four of
them coming this year.
Just to add insult to injury in front
of a crowd of nearly 30,000, David
Salom won both Evo races with two
10
th
place finishes on his Kawasaki
Racing Team Evo ZX-10R.
The significance of these perfor-
mances was not lost on anybody,
particularly after an Imola race where
Sykes and his team struggled to find
gearbox settings (limited under the
new rules for 2014) to let him com-
pete for wins there.
He lost his championship lead in
Italy, but grabbed it back here - but
only after two contrasting races with
the same final 1-2 outcome.
The first race of the day was what
Sykes thinks may be the best of his
entire career, as he was 11th at one
stage and made his way through to
win a fight with his teammate Baz. It
could have ended in tears for each as
Baz lost the front maybe twice as he
tried to re-pass Sykes. The margin of
victory was 1.538 seconds after 23
amazing laps, with Sykes willed on by
the crowd.
"Yes, maybe that was the best race
of my career," Sykes said. "Maybe
