INTERVIEW
WORLD SUPERBIKE RACER TOM SYKES
P104
coals to what he plans to be
another title run. And so it was
at Portimao—the halfway mark of
the season—where Tom Sykes
spoke about his recent resur-
gence.
Tom, I'm going to take a
wild guess and say that you're
in a good frame of mind here
at the Autodromo Internacio-
nal Algrave in Portugal.
Correct. Correct. Yep.
What did the two wins
at Donington mean to you?
You're not the kind of guy that
ever gives up and those wins
were long in coming, weren't
they?
It was all a good step in the
right direction. You know it's
been a frustrating… let's say a
slow period. Basically we had
some rule changes over the
winter and a bike I'd kind of gone
through with a fine tooth comb
over the last three or four years
kind of took a big step back-
wards on me. I really felt limited
on what I could do with the bike
and my first comment to my crew
chief Marcel [Duinker] after rid-
ing it was, and I remember this
so clearly, "Unfortunately, I now
feel like I am riding the bike and
not racing. I feel so handicapped
or disadvantaged to what I've
"THEY SAY RUBBING IS RACING AND IF
WE [JONATHAN REA] WOULD HAVE BEEN
KNOCKING EACH OTHER ABOUT I'M SURE
THAT THE AFTER-RACE INTERVIEW WOULD
HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT, BUT THERE WERE
ABSOLUTELY NO HARD FEELINGS AND WE
WENT ON TO RACE TWO."
(Left) The double-
win at the British
World Superbike
round was the boost
Sykes needed to
get back on track in
2015.
(Right) Sykes was
quite comfortable
on the ZX-10R that
he spent the last
four years fine-
tuning—the one
under the new
technical rules, not
so much.
