Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes clinched another World Superbike race victory at Donington Park, and this afternoon crossed the finishing line to bag his eighth consecutive win at the circuit, meaning he has remained undefeated at the track since 2013.
Even though he had a good pace during race two, he did experience a knocking sensation with his ZX-10R but he was able to ride through the problem and fended off his team-mate Jonathan Rea in the second race this afternoon.
In a repeat of race one, Sykes had to fight for the maximum 25 points, but he believed that this made his win ‘more rewarding’. With 50 points gained after today’s round Huddersfield’s finest is now up to second in the overall championship standings, and is 56 points adrift of Rea.
“I am over the moon and I had a good start to the race and I had some good pace at the beginning. But we developed a bit of a knocking sensation on the front folks and it was really strange but the good thing is that the Kawasaki worked through its problems and for sure it was not perfect and we had a lot of pressure, but honestly speaking apart from that we did a good job,” said Sykes at the track.
“We had to fight and it was more rewarding when you win like this and for this I am grateful to Kawasaki and all the boys and we have won three of the last four. We won on some difficult circuits this year, in Sepang and also here on a circuit of two halves and consistently we are getting better. This makes me happy going to bed tonight knowing we have had a perfect weekend and still face some issues in the race but that makes it more rewarding and gives me something extra to sleep on.
“Today has made it all worth while and we were able to respond to some hard pushes on track and we were able to sacrifice a bit of lap time ,and make the race win so this is what we came to do and I am happy for it. There was a lot of pressure coming through the gates here on Wednesday and everyone automatically expects that you are going to win but it is a World Championship and it is not that easy, and we came out in a good way.”
