VOL. 51 ISSUE 26 JULY 1, 2014 P23
est. It's the last Grand Prix in the
stadium and I managed to nick
it. I took a little bit of a gamble
with my bike in the final to try and
make it go faster. I knew I didn't
have the speed to be able to win
the race in the semis. It helped
a bit. It wasn't perfect, but I just
managed to squeeze into that
first corner in the lead."
Third-placed Hancock refused
to get too excited with the result
- moving to the top with 73 points
– one ahead of Woffinden.
"It's a long season and what
matters most to me is being the
champ and being in the lead at
the end," Hancock said. "You
can never count your chickens.
There is a long way to go still and
like I've always said, I'm in it for
the long run. We'll see what hap-
pens."
John Hipkiss
WORLD SUPER-
BIKE RULES: WHAT
THE CHAMP THINKS
T
he new technical rules for the Superbike World
Championship in 2015 mean many different
things to many different people. For World Cham-
pion Tom Sykes, the announcement was largely a
disappointment, even if they feature far more com-
promises in favor of the current more liberal tuning
and modifications allowed in the full World Super-
bike class in 2014.
"At the end of the day it is only a matter of time
before ride by wire is on the roadbikes anyway,"
Sykes said. "The bikes are developed for the road
here in World Superbike. I think road users have
massive benefits from that. This year even having
three gearboxes has caused us a limitation and
certainly next year with one gearbox… for me we
are arriving at a point where it is almost racing for
dummies. It feels like racing with my granddad out
of the back of a Transit van at club level. You were
almost able to do more changes there."
The main issue for Sykes appears to be that after
a career spent learning how to make the most of all
the technology a modern Superbike allows, he and
the other top teams will now no longer be able to
make full use of their joint experience.
"From a technical perspective I worked hard all
my life to get to World Superbike and always saw
MotoGP and World Superbike as a pinnacle where
you can do things, where the best teams and the
best riders get the freedom to mess about and al-
ways develop technically and mentally," said Sykes.
"I feel that some of this has been taken away and it
is a great shame. All these records that are stand-
ing… we will not be able to give the fans the spec-
tacle of breaking records. The more we go Evo.
Evo is almost like Supersport."
Sykes also thinks that one of the intended out-
comes of all the new rule changes will actually not
turn out to be true – even closer competition.
"I know they are trying to bring the championship
closer, but I think the more standard you go the
more that some manufacturers are going to stand
head and shoulders over the others," said Sykes.
"At the moment .7 of a second can cover the top 10
riders very regularly in WSB. I am confident we can
say that .7 is going to be covering the top five on
a good day if you go more towards an Evo class. It
is still a massive shame from my racing heart, my
passion."
Gordon Ritchie
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
GOLD
&
GOOSE
Tom Sykes isn't a fan of the new World Superbike
regulations.
