After much speculation about his future over the past six weeks, Tom Sykes has put pen to paper and will continue with the factory Kawasaki team in 2012 alongside this year's team-mate Joan Lascorz.

Sykes spent a difficult year with the Paul Bird squad but managed to take his, and the team's, first ever WSBK win at the Nurburgring in September and he believes there is more to come from a further developed ZX-10R.

"I'm very happy to be continuing with Kawasaki and the Ninja ZX-10R in 2012. I believe the bike has good potential and we saw some of that come through in 2011 with a race win in Germany and superpole at Misano. These are the kind of results I am looking to achieve in the coming season on a regular basis and I really believe we can do this," said the Huddersfield man.

"I have a lot of confidence in Kawasaki and the team around me, so if we can improve a couple of points with the set-up of the bike on the track which I feel are restricting performance this would be a big step forward for us in the final results. I am looking forward to re-starting our test programme again very soon."